I swear I don't know how these things happen. Pandagirl had a friend sleeping over tonight and both girls asked to help me make dinner, which was going to be Swedish meatballs over egg noodles with broccoli on the side. Simple. No-brainer. And I already had the ground turkey defrosted because I have my head in the game!
Sort of.
Anyway, much like meatloaf, it feels ridiculous to give a meatball recipe because everyone has their own method and madness. So the charm here lies in the girls making them.
Very quickly this was 2 eggs with some fresh breadcrumbs, dried minced onion, parmesan, a squeeze of mustard, a squeeze of ketchup, and fresh parsley. Ground turkey mixed in, form into balls, brown in the skillet.
Roll the montage!
When nice and browned, I added 1/2 cup white wine and 1/2 cup chicken broth, lowered the heat, covered and let simmer while I finished up the noodles and broccoli.
Then I took the meatballs out, turned up the heat, mixed 1/4 cup chicken broth with 2 tablespoons of Wondra, and whisked that into the pan (I'm actually figuring this gravy thing out).
Then the meatballs went back into the gravy for a few minutes, last touches here and there, plate up the money shot, a sprinkle of parsley, zoom in:
And then we were in business for a lovely dinner downstairs while watching E. T. (which the kids have never seen)
90 seconds into the movie, Panda says, "Mom, these meatballs are really spicy."
"Yeah, they really are," says her friend.
"I don't like them," Redman said, the picture of despondency.
He loves meatballs and I'd already gotten the pre-emptive, "Mom you make the best dinner" while they were still cooking. He looked at me now like I owed him money.
"But that's impossible," I said, sitting down and picking up my fork. "We didn't put anything in them that was spicy."
I took a bite. Spicy. Like hot spicy. Hot Italian sausage spicy, what the hell? I put down my plate, went back upstairs, dug through the garbage to find the ground turkey container. I brought the edges of the cut plastic shrink wrap together to reassemble the label and read: Pre-spiced Ground Turkey, Italian sausage flavoring.
Son of a bitch.
"They're not that bad," Jeeps said comfortingly.
The kids ignored him and the meatballs, and ate all the noodles and broccoli.
I sulked.