Sloppy Joe? Sloppy NO!

Recently, during the all too short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which this year flew by even faster with a new baby in the house I decided to take some dinner help from a can of Sloppy Joe mix. Touting a serving of vegetables in each portion, it seemed a home run.  A sure thing. What could go wrong?  To top it off the stuff was on sale at the store. But then again, I have a feeling it always is. Since dinner was coming out of a can, I even decided to lay off my health kick and bought white Kaiser rolls to go with the Sloppy Joes.  Why be a kill joy and try to offer up whole wheat rolls?

In the sliver of time I had between breastfeeding sessions, I browned some ground beef, cracked open a can of Sloppy Joe, mixed the two, and voila! Dinner was done.  Now, I did not grow up eating Sloppy Joes, but judging from the sheer Sloppy Joe induced glee of the kids I’ve babysat over the years, this stuff is like manna from heaven.  Plus my little one loves any kind of food that’s messy to eat. The messier the better, and what’s messier than ground beef mixed with tomato sauce, eaten with your hands? The name itself couldn’t be clearer about its messy nature.  I was so proud of myself when I delivered Missy’s plate, fully expecting to be able to sit back and let her have at it, whilst making a megabath worthy mess. I was already planning to stock up on ingredients for a healthier home-made Sloppy Joe mix that could become a staple of our dinner table.  I’m sure you, dear reader already know where this is headed. 

Missy would not even give it a try. I’m talking hysterical wailing, flailing arms and kicking legs.  Who would have thought food could elicit such a passionate response?  I know it’s supposed to take up to ten tries for a kid to accept new foods, but I’m not sure I’m willing to go through that kind of drama that many times.  What I didn’t get is this kid loves the main components of a Sloppy Joe: tomato sauce, ground beef, bread. None of the flavors were new and I didn’t think the veggies hidden in the mix could possibly come through strongly enough to be a turn off for the kid, but still it was a no go.  Even my fail safe trick of eating off mommy’s plate didn’t work (not fail safe anymore, I guess).  Maybe next time I need to try a deconstructed Sloppy Joe… Let’s see, freeze dried tomatoes, vegetable crisps, beef Carpaccio, and toasted croutons.  I think I’ve been watching too many cheffy shows. 

Grandma’s Finnish Meatballs

My mom arrived about a week ago to help me in the last few weeks of pregnancy, and the timing couldn’t have been better as I now have twice weekly prenatal appointments and there is just no way I could bring little missy with me.  As my due date nears, we are making plans for easy meals that my mom can serve to missy and that we can ideally make now and freeze for easy serving later.  I’m also interested in learning some of my mom’s recipes as I’ve always loved her cooking, even though she claims to not know what she’s doing.  Pretty much everything she ever served us was made from scratch, so in my book that means mad skills!

This afternoon while missy napped we made some simple yet delicious meatballs with a cool secret ingredient (that will not be so secret anymore).

Grandma’s Meatballs

1 lb ground beef

1 yellow onion, finely minced

1 package baby bella mushrooms, finely minced

2 eggs

2 tbs uncooked cous cous

Salt & pepper to taste

Sauté the onion and mushroom, adding salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cool.

Thoroughly mix sautéed onions and mushrooms, ground beef, egg, and cous cous.  Add salt & pepper if needed (you may heat up a sauté pan and cook a small amount of the mix to safely taste it).

Form ground beef mixture into meatballs of your desired size with your hands. Ours were approximately 2 tbs of meat, so pretty small. We got about 40 meatballs. 

Place meatballs on a baking sheet and cook in a 375 degree oven 15-20 minutes. Clearly cooking times will vary depending on the meatball size. 

Can you guess the secret ingredient? Yeah, cous cous!  The cous cous cooked up perfectly within the meatballs and took the place of the more traditional breadcrumbs.  If you think it’s an odd addition to meatballs, you don’t notice them at all texturally, but they definitely make for a more moist and soft meatball because you lose hardly any of the juices as the meatballs cook, as they get absorbed by the cous cous. 

Of course you cannot make meatballs without sauce, so we made a somewhat traditional brown sauce.  Now this is not quite like the Swedish sauce most of us are familiar with, but it’s not far off.  The big difference is the Swedes add nutmeg to their well known meatball sauce and the Finns do not use nutmeg as much in everyday cooking (it’s more of a Christmas spice).  Of course, you can certainly add it to the sauce if you wish.  Basically all you do is make a béchamel sauce incorporating any drippings collected from the meatball baking sheet and add some beef stock to it. 

Brown Sauce:

1 tbs flour

1.5 tbs butter

Meatball drippings

Milk (approx ½ cup) or cream (if you want to be decadent)

Beef stock (approx 1 cup)

Salt & pepper to taste (keep in mind that if you use salted stock, you may not need to add any salt). 

I apologize that some of the amounts are approximate as I pretty much eyeballed the ingredients as I added them to the sauce.  Of course depending on how much sauce you want to make, you can add more or less liquid.   

In a saucepan or sauté pan, create a roux using the butter, flour, and meatball drippings.  Cook until the mixture resembles wet sand (this will enhance the brown color of the sauce).

Stirring constantly, add the milk and allow the sauce to thicken.

Once the sauce has thickened, gradually add the beef stock, stirring continually to avoid separation. The sauce will look thin at first but will thicken up again as it heats up.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add the meatballs to the sauce and heat them through. 

According to my mom you can give this a Russian twist by adding some diced sour pickles and sour cream to the sauce. 

What would you serve this with?  How about some simple boiled or mashed potatoes, egg noodles (a la a meatball stroganoff), or some lovely crusty bread, and of course your favorite vegetables?  I might add some pickled beets, but that’s my Finnish roots showing.  Now, this was a dangerous dish for me to be making with my gestational diabetes and I certainly didn’t think I could make a meal of them, but I still couldn’t resist tasting the end product. I mean a couple of small meatballs (with cous cous) with a little bit of brown sauce can’t have that many carbs.  Plus being in the last couple of weeks of pregnancy, that’s about as much as I can eat anyway!  Little missy was happy as a clam with her meatballs and even asked for seconds!  Well, she did the Oliver Twist thing, picking up her empty plate and holding it up to me. When I asked if she wanted more, she said, “more.”  Because my mom and I were lazy, we did not make the potatoes or noodles to go with the meatballs, so missy had hers with her favorite diced raw red peppers on the side.  Now, I mentioned earlier that we were planning to freeze foods but I would not freeze these in the sauce as I’ve read that a béchamel sauce will separate and just turn ugly when you freeze it.  So, if you are freezing, just freeze the meatballs on their own.  

Hamburger Helper Aint Got Nothing on Me!

I have to begin this post with a disclaimer. I have never actually made or eaten Hamburger Helper, so I don’t know exactly what goes into it, but I imagine from the ads that it’s some sort of pasta, ground beef, and cheese concoction. This meal was born out of a need to come up with something nutritious for Little Missy, having not managed to drag myself to the store as I intended. In my defense, it was super hot and humid, Missy had barely napped and the house was shrouded in blue tarp as our roof was getting redone (hence the lack of a nap, even though the lighting in the house made it feel like The Napping House), oh yeah and being 24 weeks preggo on top of all that hardly made getting to the store a tempting thought. So, it was another evening of peering into the pantry and freezer to come up with ideas. Lucky for me I always stock certain things that can be whipped up into acceptable meals. I always have different types of whole grain pasta, various frozen veggies, shredded cheese, frozen ground beef and turkey. So I decided to make a cheesy, pasta burger thingy with some hidden bonus veggies. Quick and easy! Actually it’s so simple that I’m almost embarrassed to post this but, then again not every meal has to be totally gourmet, right?

Ingredients (enough for 2-3 toddler sized servings):

Whole grain penne pasta (about 1 cup uncooked)

1 frozen beef patty

Frozen mixed pepper strips (half cup or so)

Shredded cheese (1-2 handfuls)

Salt & Pepper (to taste)

Ketchup (a couple of squirts)

Take out a frozen beef patty and allow to thaw on counter as you boil water for pasta.

When water comes to a boil, add some salt if you wish and add the pasta.

While pasta cooks pour frozen pepper strips into a microwave safe bowl, add enough pasta water to just barely cover the peppers. Microwave in 1 minute intervals until peppers are cooked (2-3 minutes). Most of the water will evaporate as they cook.

Once peppers are cooked, puree them in a mini food processor and set aside.

Put burger patty on a microwave safe plate, cover with damp paper towel and finish thawing it in microwave. This should only take about a minute. Transfer thawed patty into hot sauté pan and finish cooking it, breaking it up as you go along. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

When pasta is cooked, drain it (you can reserve some pasta cooking water in case the mixture is dry) and return to hot pan. Add the pepper puree, cooked ground beef (minus any grease) and mix with a couple of handfuls of shredded cheese and ketchup.

That’s it! All done, in about 15 minutes. For anyone wanting to try a vegetarian version, I have made this with red lentils instead of the ground beef. I just added a small amount of red lentils to the pot as the pasta cooked. The beauty of red lentils is that they don’t need to be presoaked and cook up quite fast. They are barely noticeable in the cheese mixture and add a nice nutty flavor and of course tons of protein. As it turned out Little Missy enjoyed both the ground beef and lentil versions of this dish, so it will be added to the repertoire.

This is very obviously a kid dish. However, you can easily make an adult version with the same basic ingredients. Picture pasta with pepper strips, shredded parmesan and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil for example. I have yet to test any grown up friendly recipes, but promise to post as soon as I do. Of course, if you’re like me, you end up eating what you made for the kiddos because the thought of making a second dish, even with mostly the same ingredients is just overwhelming.