Meatballs

My mom is an incredibly talented woman. To start off with, she raised four kids almost on her own. My dad was a truck driver (he works in an office now which is why that is in past tense) and he was rarely home. My mom also survived cancer, that left her with an arm that doesn't work as well as it did pre-cancer. And even with a wrist that doesn't work to its full capacity, my mom is very crafty. I mean in the artistic way, not in the deceitful way. She makes beautiful quilts, and I would love to be able to scrapbook anywhere nearly as good as she can.

There are a few meals that my mom made, that are my all time favorites. One of them is the meatballs pictured above. My twin and I love these. (No, I don't really have a twin, one of my sisters is convinced that she is my twin so we sometimes call each other that).

The original recipe called for adding diced onion to the meat, which I substitute for onion powder. My twin and I also didn't think the original recipe had enough sauce, so we doubled it.

If you are feeling particularly lazy, you cannot just brown up some ground beef and pour the sauce in with it. My twin did this once, and the result was not good.

To make the meatballs you combine:

1 package of ground beef

just over half a cup of rolled oats

1 egg

a couple pinches of onion powder

a couple pinches of garlic powder

a dash of Worcestershire sauce

if the mix seems a bit dry, you can add a bit of milk.

Roll the meat into balls that are bigger than ping pong balls, but smaller than tennis balls. Place them into a baking dish.

To make the sauce combine:

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup ketchup

a pinch of garlic salt

a dash of Worcestershire sauce

Pour the sauce over the meatballs. Cover the dish and bake at 350 F for an hour.

Every single time that I have made this is serve it over white rice, with canned brown beans on the side.

After supper I had a hankering for cookies, so I made Chocolate Chip Coconut Oatmeal cookies. I did a couple things differently. I didn't have all purpose flour, so I used bread flour. I had googled whether or not that was ok, and I was warned that the bread flour might make the cookies dry. The mix did appear to be dry, so I added a bit of milk. I was out of vanilla, so I used Kahlua instead. The recipe said drop the cookies in teaspoons, but I did them in double tablespoons. Which meant after 12 minutes, they were not done baking, and they took about 5 or 6 minutes longer.

Even with all my meddling, the cookies turned out really good. I gave one to my brother in law to try, and he said that there wasn't enough chocolate chips. He is right, so if you bake these use a cup of chocolate chips.