cooking again

this could become a daily thing i suppose... i do love to cook, most of the time... and it is more economical... most of the time... so, today i made meatballs and spaghetti and salad for me and chicken and salad for jackson... she's not a red meat fan (i don't eat much of it myself... maybe a few times a month and then some months none at all, though get me around a barbecue and i'll eat almost anything, but that's another story for another entry) and she's not exercising daily so she wants to stay away from pasta... and did it take time to prepare?... yes... i didn't time it though... will i do this when i am working full time again?... not daily, but definitely on weekends... anyway, the meatballs were disappointing... i was lazy (or was it trying to keep calories down... or was it the thumb) and did not add breadcrumbs or egg and i did not put enough spices in it for me and the meat was cheap... the new spices i tried are weak, but then, that's how we learn... next time, more spice (had to try the new stuff)...

and the meat itself, well, i used to only use ground sirloin (actually, back when i was as they used to say, flush i would buy a whole filet untrimmed and grind it myself and you never tasted hamburgers like those... sometimes i'd throw in a ribeye or two for even more flavor... amazing, those burgers... so naturally my pallet still longs for those better cuts of meat, but more recently use a mix of sirloin and other cuts (usually chuck, though i am not a fan of chuck), and this was cheap ground beef ($2.68 a pound)... 15% fat, so not the cheapest, but who knows what they threw in (all the scraps go into ground beef, after all... sometimes that's great cuz the cut aways from all the best cuts go in their too, but not so much this time... some places wisely use the fat from the best cuts which is taster, not albertsons, i suppose... next time, back to adding sirloin and not ground beef... meatballs should not be asking for a condiment, ya know?... though ketchup does fix most anything... oh shush lol)... and the salt-free spice needed salt lol... at least salt-free does not work for meatballs for me... there is also another missing flavor and that is onion... i used dried chopped onion and either not enough, or simply not up to fresh onions, which also affects the moisture content of the balls... then there's the fat content... i did not cook the meatballs (pan fry or oven broil) before adding them to the sauce and i did not spice the sauce so what we have is plain ragu sauce with way too much fat watering it down to i'll refrigerate and scoop off the thick layer of fat tomorrow and then spice the sauce and reheat... they are tasty balls of beef right now, just not enough spice and too much cheap beef for my taste... they are still better than frozen meatballs though... and most likely they will be a whole lot better the second day...