Volume Three

Hello again, and welcome to Volume Three of ny culinary adventures. I've made it to the third entry which makes this, as I mentioned in my last entry, my most successful attempt at blogging. I'm actually finding this pretty enjoyable - being on E.I. while substitute teaching occasionally makes for a lot of free time and I haven't found a hobby (until now) that I've enjoyed as much as this. It's almost like being an unofficial food critic and it gives me something to share and reminds me of the tastiest meals I've had so I can continue to make them.

As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday I tried out another Sopranos cookbook recipe. This one was called Hot Meatball and Mozzarella Heroes. I combined extra lean ground beef with pecorino-romano cheese, fresh chopped parsley, breadcrumbs, eggs, mik, salt and pepper. What a difference the pecorino-romano cheese made than just making regular meatballs! It made the meatballs super juicy and not dry like they sometimes are. Anyway, I set these aside and got to working on the Tomato Sauce. Basically just crushed tomatoes simmering with garlic, onion, and basil for 10-15 minutes on the stove. Once done I poured the sauce into the skillet with the meatballs and simmered for another 10 minutes, like so:

Meatballs Simmering

All I did next was take two whole wheat sub rolls, split them open and layer the meatballs inside and smother with the tomato sauce. I cut a couple slizes of mozzarella cheese and placed the rolls under the broiler for only about a minute or so just to melt the cheese. These bad boys came out looking like this:



Hot Meatball and Mozzarella Heroes with Crinkle Fries

 Okay, so I know that these are probably majorly unhealthy but holy crap, were they good. If it's meat and cheese and bread, I am there. Since these things were pretty massive (only four meatballs on each one but the bread and cheese and sauce was more than enough), I only popped a couple fries in the oven for Randy and I to have. These sandwiches were divine. Randy picked it as his number one favorite from the week's meals and damnit, were I a little more Italian (or even an iota of an Italian) and a little more badass, I would've felt like Tony Soprano himself chowing down on one of these. I was ungodly full when finished but they were too good to waste. There were enough leftover meatballs and sauce that I threw on a pot of rice and packed them up for Randy to take to work for lunch the next day. Definitely would give these sandwiches a 8 or 9 out of 10. If you're in the mood for something meaty and delicious, these are it.

Tonight Randy took me out to Don Cherry's in exchange for helping him out with some schoolwork. It was pretty packed when we got there so we ordered a jug of beer while we perused the menu. This is Randy looking especially cheerful as I annoy him:

Mr.Pleasant

We were not overly hungry which in the end was a good thing, because we waited almost an hour for our food. The waitress was pretty apologetic though and ended up giving us a 15% discount. I ordered the Chicken Bacon Swiss on Ciabatta bread with cherry chips:

It was pretty tasty and for once, I received a reasonable amount of food at this restaurant. By reasonable, I mean I didn't get a lumberjack's meal and actually left the restaurant satisfied but not grossly full. The only disappointment was that on the menu, the sandwich was supposed to have mustard on it but instead came slathered in butter. But whatever, mmmmmm butter.

Randy ordered the pan-fried cod with french fries which came out looking like this:

He commented that the cod was pretty dry which I am not really surprised at because it isn't something they're really known for. Overall, not the GREATEST food, but tasty enough and the beer went down well after we both had a day of bawling at arrogant teenagers.

Tomorrow I'm going to Gander for the night with Carrie and Mom and Dad are bbq'ing steaks.

Shout-outs for the past two days go out to chocolate chip oatmeal muffins (homemade), five star bars, apple-crumble vanilla Source yogurts, and  plain oatmeal with cinnamon and blueberries.

Thanks for reading!