Randy's Recessionista Recipe

Your recessionista tips are fabulous--keep 'em coming! It seems a lot of your ideas are centered around how to cut back in terms of food costs. That is a big place where we could improve too. This year I have been making a concerted effort to eat out less and to be smarter and less wasteful when it comes to buying food and making meals. I thought I'd share the yummy, cost saving way I turned a package of $5 Wal-Mart ground beef into three meals. One meal was soft tacos with all the fixins. The second was really just Edgar's meal--a bunless burger with sweet potato fries on the side--because I was having some frozen meal and he wanted a burger. After dinner last night I decided to use the rest to make homemade meatballs since I had all of the ingredients already in the house. Preparing them last night saved me a ton of time after work tonight. All I did was cook the spaghetti and then throw in the sauce and meatballs. It was a really, really easy and yummy meal. I thought you might like the meatball recipe. To give credit where credit is due, I got it from a Martha Stewart Everyday Food that randomly appeared in my mailbox. I'm sure Martha is just trying to lure me in, but I will resist you Martha...I will resist you. But really, there is nothing like a free "cookbook." Possibly better than free panties. So totally recessionista chic!

(Oops, I think I accidentally jumped the gun and hit Publish. I had a spasm! I wasn't done with this post--WTF!)

So the meatball recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:

coarse salt and ground pepper
1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley (I only had dried, so I used what I had and it worked fine)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 large egg
1 pound ground beef
1/4 plain dried breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon olive oil

In bowl, combine Parmesan, parsley, garlic, egg, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Add beef and bread crumbs; mix gently. Form into 16 balls.

In a pot (or pan!), heat oil over medium. Add meatballs and cook, turning occasionally. I think it took 10-15 minutes until they were done. At this point I put them in the fridge, but if you were going to eat them immediately, then make your pasta and add the meatballs to the sauce! I decided to mix everything together, but of course you can make the sauce separately to pour over the pasta.

It's just the two of us, so we had a bunch leftover too. I hope you try it and love it too!