Melt In Your Mouth Meatballs

I am a HUGE fan of Recipezaar. I stumbled upon in about one month ago when I was searching for a dessert using blackberries. I love the how user-friendly the website is. It is lightning fast to look up recipes. My daughter wanted to have buttered pasta for her birthday yesterday so Iwas looking for a sauce that I could cook in the crock pot. After all, I would be very happy with buttered pasta, but the men would not! Men have to have meat or they think they aren't have a real meal or something. Does this happen to all you other ladies out there?

Anyway, I typed in meatballs and searched by ratings. Kittencal's Famous Italian Melt-In-Your-Mouth Meatballs popped up on the screen. It was rated 5 star recipe by 472 people so how could I go wrong? I had to double the recipe so I decided to go with 2 pounds of ground beef and 1 pound of mild italian sausage. I kept all the other measurements the same. I believe the recipe calls for you to cook the meatballs in the sauce, but also says that you can bake them for about 25 minutes. I decided to bake them. I have cooked meatballs in sauce before and had the sauce become a little greasy. I didn't want that to happen at the birthday party, so I baked them just in case. The outcome was so fabulous! I used 80/20 ground beef and there was no grease at all. The only thing on the baking sheet was a little bit of melted parmesan. These meatballs were so super tasty and delicous when they first came out of the oven. They were almost better without any sauce on them at all. My husband was standing over the oven trying to steal all the meatballs. He kept saying "Are you sure you need all those for the party tomorrow."

I refrigerated them overnight and added them to the sauce the next morning and cooked them in the sauce in the crockpot until they were heated through. They were a big hit at the party yesterday. These meatballs were very flavorful. You can taste the garlic, parsley, oregano, and parmesan cheese. There is nothing bland about them at all. And, every single meatball held its shape. They were baked, regfrigerated, dumped in the crockpot, and stirred and stirred and poked by several people. There were no little broken up pieces at all. I was super impressed with this meatball recipe and will be trying it again. I'm especially thinking about turning this recipe into a meatloaf. We love meatloaf at our house. It's one of our favorites!!

Caesar Salad *Recipe # 35*

Caesar Salad is one of my favorite things when I go out to a restaurant. For whatever reason, I have never made this at home until now. Sure, I have had it with the bottled dressing at home but never with homemade dressing. I kept putting this one off. Everytime I was hungry for Caesar Salad I thought about the anchovy paste and the raw egg yolk in the dressing. Why do I allow these things to bother me? I guess I'm quirky that way.

Normally I am the only person in my house who will eat salad. I don't usually like to make a big salad like this because it would just go to waste. However, yesterday was my daughter's 8th birthday and we had some family over. I knew I had at least 4 or 5 salad eaters so I decided to go with this recipe. Everything was so chaotic and busy that I forgot about the raw egg yolk and anchovy paste and shoveled the food down my throat as fast as possible. The salad was really good!! It was so good that by the time I ate it was almost gone. My sister-in-law said it was the bomb! I was glad to hear it because I haven't really made too many salad dressings in my life and I was a little unsure about how this one turned out.

This recipe is easy and very easy to follow. You make the salad dressing in the blender and it is finished in no time at all. I did some research online and found that 1 teaspoon anchovy paste equals 4 anchovies. I added the 1 teaspoon anchovy paste, 2 egg yolks, 1 tbsp. dijon mustard, juice of 2 lemons, and 2 tbsps. water in the blender and processed for 30 seconds. With the blender running, in poured in the oil. I poured the dressing into a bowl and stirred in 1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese and added black pepper. I refrigerated the dressing for a couple hours.

I had already cut up the romaine lettuce and the only other thing left to do was create the garlic paste to rub onto the serving bowl. Tyler says to take 1 clove of garlic that is peeled and smashed. He mixes this with a little salt and olive oil to create a paste and rubs it all over the bowl. Before serving you just add the salad and dressing and toss. I had some baguette that had been toasted, but I thought it was still too hot to add to the salad. I added some big parmesan curls to the top of the salad and served it.

I would make this again if I had some salad eaters around to help me eat it all! The only thing I would change is the quantity of lemon juice. I added the full juice of 2 lemons and my dressing was a little on the lemony side. It was also a little thin. I don't know if the juice of 2 lemons is a very good measurement. I looked this up online and found that one lemon should yield 3 tbsps. juice. This means that I should have added only about 6 tbsps. lemon juice. I think I added a little more than this. In my rush to get all the food prepared, I didn't measure the lemon juice. I think the next time lemon juice comes up in a recipe I will measure the juice of one lemon as 3 tbsps. I enjoy learning these things sometimes. After all, I bet I've read the information about lemons several times. But, you learn by trial and error and then you usually never forget it!!

Tyler Florence's Big Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have ate so many cookies today!!!!! Maybe that's a good thing! Surely I won't want to eat any sweets tomorrow at the Derby party?? Well, maybe for the first hour and then I bet I'll start craving sweets again : ) Well, I saved the best cookie for last!! My all-time favorite cookie is Tyler's big fat chocolate chip cookie. I have made this about 7 or 8 times since my first post. I have made them with all dark chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, milk chocolate, and today I made them with half semi-sweet and half white chocolate. This was all the chocolate that I had left in my pantry and I figured that I couldn't go wrong. We were not dissapointed!!

This cookie recipe is a sure thing! If you haven't tried it yet, then I am telling you that you have been missing out!! This is the best cookie recipe around. Try it with all kinds of chocolate. Throw in some oatmeal, raisins, nuts, coconut... Make your own adapatations. I certainly have and the recipe works everytime. The one thing that I will say is that you have to make the cookie BIG. I tried to make smaller cookies and they were not as chewy. Experiment with this recipe, but continue to make the cookies the 1/4 c. size in the recipe. I bet you won't be dissapointed either : )

Pecan Sandies - Everyday Food

These were the first of the four cookies that I made today! I simply made these cookies to use up my last bit of pecans that were laying around. They were a cinch to make and were also very, very quick. There were very few ingredients needed. The dough was a little on the crumbly side and just a tad hard to roll into a ball. I used my little ice cream scooper and it managed the dough a lot easier. These cookies really grow on you as you eat them. By the time you are finishing your first cookie you are wanting another one!

My husband and I both thought that this was a really good recipe when you want to stray from the old standby cookie. We even said that this would make a great ice cream sandwich with some vanilla ice cream sandwiched in between two cookies!!

You can find the recipe here on Martha's site.

Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies - Everday Food

This is another great recipe for cookies from the newest copy of Everyday Food. These sandwich cookies were a lot easier to make than the "oreo" type posted earlier. The dough is simple and is rolled in cling wrap and then tucked in the freezer for an hour. Once the dough is removed from the freezer it is much easier to slice and bake. Mine are a normal cookie size and round in shape. It looks like they are more log shaped in the magazine. It didn't really matter to me (especially after making four types of cookies- LOL). In fact, when I was adding the filing I was practically falling asleep. It didn't matter to me how pretty they looked!!

This is a very tasty and addictive cookie and it should come with a warning!! The recipe makes about 30 sandwiches and I would advise you to have lots of company to help gobble them up!! If you are a peanut butter lover than this is your cookie!!

Chocolate N' Cream Sandwich Cookies - Everyday Food

I baked four types of cookies today for a Derby party tomorrow. Of all the cookies I baked, these ones were the most time-consuming, the most messy and the biggest pain. I had to add more butter to the cookie dough because it was too crumbly. Then I had to mop the floor and clean off all the cookie crumbs everywhere. They are very, very good though. I have seen all kinds of homemade oreo type cookies on blogs this year. I am very excited and happy to say that I tried these today. We loved them and are excited to share them tomorrow at the Derby party. I don't think they'll last long!!

This recipe was found in the latest edition of Martha's Everyday Food Magazine, or you can go here and see the video and recipe. These cookies are made with butter for the cream filing and let me tell you that I love that!! I have been avoiding these cookies simply because I am not a fan of shortening. I don't want to eat it and I don't even want to think about eating it! It's not that I'm really trying to be healthy, it just makes me nauseous!! These cookies are delicious and rich and I'm happy to say that I really felt fulfilled after eating just one!

Lamb T-Bones with Smashed Potatoes and Peas *Recipe # 34*

Today was such a busy day, but at least I was productive. I needed to decide on what to make for a Derby party tomorrow night. Then I needed to plan a menu for my daughter's 8th birthday party on Sunday. Plus, I had these lamb t-bones in my refrigerator that had to be cooked today. There was no way I was wasting those babies! They were $13 for three little portions.

Well, I must have been feeling motivated this morning while looking through my copy of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine. She had a section on famliar favorite cookies. The hostess for the Derby party was saying that she needed more desserts and I must say that I was inspired by this magazine. There were recipes for peanut butter sandwich cookies, handmade oreos, pecan sandies and more. I guess I was ambitious because I made all three of those cookies and then I made Tyler's Big Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies. I am probably going to post all those cookies separately. They were all so delicious that they deserve their own spotlight.

Anyway, back to the Lamb T-Bones. In between my dough resting in the freezer I marinaded the lamb t-bones in a combo of lemon juice, bay leaf, shallot, parsley, olive oil, and salt and pepper. The lamb marinades for 45 minutes. While the lamb marinades you boil 8 medium new baby red potatoes in a large pot for about 30 minutes, or until fork tender. During the time the potatoes are cooking you blanch 1 cup of frozen peas in boiling water and then shock them in a cold water bath. When the potatoes are fork-tender, you drain them and add 1/2 cup heavy cream and a drizzle of olive oil. After you stir the cream and oil in then you add the peas and mix. Absolutely delicous!! I have never made potatoes with cream and olive oil before and it was a very tasty combo!!

I grilled the lamb chops for 5 minutes on the first side and about 2 minutes on the second side. Tyler says to cook them for 2 minutes on each side for medium-rare. Mine were still very close to rare. Rare is not my favorite way to eat meat but this dish was to die for!! I ate the plate even though the meat was rare! My daughter (who is very picky) was begging for more!! She loved the flavors. My husband says that this is one of his favorites from the book so far. His only complaint was that there was very little meat on the t-bone and that it was hard to cut the meat away from the bone! My daughter picked hers up and ate it with her hands! She was knawing on that bone trying to get all the meat off. I really loved this dish and I think it is a dish that would please almost everyone. You have to try the red potatoes and peas mixed with cream and olive oil. You could even serve a steak in place of the lamb t-bone and it would be delicous as well. This is a make again dish for us. We loved the citrusy marinade on the lamb and want to try it on other meats.

This one is an A+ and I am so glad!! I really wanted to love the dish after all the cooking today!!