And now, for something thoroughly NOT wedding cake:

Meatballs!

After spending the majority of last week baking more cake than many people bake in a lifetime, I’m celebrating this week by not baking anything sweet. No cookies, no cakes, no pies, nothin’. Instead, MEATBALLS.

These particular meatballs are a blend, primarily, of ground beef and ground pork. You can really mix and match any ground meats you like, or you can just use one variety. I’ve made excellent batches using only ground turkey, but beef and pork were in the freezer, so there you are. But contrary to their name, meatballs are not entirely meat. I daresay that every recipe I’ve seen suggests that bread crumbs are just as important as the meat itself.

Let’s actually talk about bread crumbs for a moment. Bread crumbs are incredibly easy to produce (if you have bread, you can make bread crumbs), but they have still managed to find their way onto the shelves of grocery stores in a consistency that often is not so much of crumbs as it is a fine dust. If you have fresh bread, a few minutes in the oven will crisp it enough that you can smash it into crumbs at whatever consistency you fancy. Or, if you have trouble making it through a baguette before it goes stale, as I always seem to do, you can grind that sucker up in the food processor for bread crumbs far more satisfying and probably more economical than the canisters at the store.

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I frequently lament that I need another freezer. We have your standard apartment fridge-and-freezer combo, but our freezer is, shall I say, stuffed. Filled to the brim. There are many reasons for this. I have given up on buying chicken breast and now buy the whole dang bird, break it down, and separate the parts into meal-size portions. I capture strawberries at their peak ripeness, freeze them on cookie sheets, then bag them up to use in winter months when the only berries to be found are the imposters at the grocery store. Insanely, I recently made enough soup to open a deli and froze most of it because really, who wants soup in 95° weather?

Oh, and last summer, after foolishly planting seven basil plants that plotted to take over the world, it was all I could do to keep up with it by tossing it in the food processor with some nuts, garlic, parmesan, and a glug or two of olive oil before freezing it in my ice cube trays to make an army of pesto cubes. (Finding actual ice in our freezer is, coincidentally, impossible. Icy beverage lovers, beware.)

And then there are the pizza doughs. I made about twenty of them in the afterglow of my homemade mozzarella cheese experiment this spring with the leftover whey, and may have over-estimated the value of their convenience in relation to my precious freezer real estate.

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Have I talked about my obsession with peas?

I’m not kidding.

I look forward to the brief harvest of pea pods from their delicate vines more than any other veggie. My grandparents planted endless rows of peas in their garden not so much because they needed that many for themselves, but because they had two wily granddaughters who spent many summer days amongst the plants, picking and eating peas still warm from the sun.

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There are things I daydream about. Sometimes, they are kitchen things.

In these kitchen daydreams, the sauce pan I need is never at the back of the cabinet. All my spice bottles are the same shape, same size, same color, and they’re all labeled in the same font. Sunshine floods across my countertops and splashes to the floor, filling the room with light. My knives are always sharp, but I never cut my fingers. Avocados grow locally. Also cashews and cocoa beans and grapefruits.

Le sigh.

Some dreams stay that way. But other dreams? Pasta-and-mushrooms-tossed-in-sun-dried-tomato-cream-sauce dreams? Oh yeah. They’re COMING TRUE.

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Remember a week or two ago when I made fresh mozzarella cheese? And I said I was gonna tell you what you could do with the 1/2 gallon + of whey that results from the cheesemaking process?

I’m here to fulfill my promise.The promise of pizza.

It’s a lovely thing when completion of one kitchen project leads inexorably to another. What better way to use a pound of fresh mozzarella than to throw the old pizza stone in the oven, pull out the pizza cutter, and have yourself a pizza feast? And this pizza crust? THIS one uses up the whey from making mozzarella. Some of it. Or if you’re moderately obsessive me, it uses all of the whey.

I’ve used several recipes over the last couple of years for homemade pizza crust. Sometimes thick and fluffy, sometimes thin and crispy, sometimes in that strange place in between. This crust is simple to put together, has a short list of ingredients, and can go from disparate ingredients to rolled-and-ready-for-toppings in less than 30 minutes.

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There are few things that can distract a pasta lover while making homemade pasta. I was so intent on working on these lovely little noodles that Brad cooked our entire dinner, which is both lovely and rare (it was uh-mazing, by the way).

However, one thing that did manage to pull me away from a mound of fresh pasta dough was Sierra calling to inform me that she had come across a post from my little food blog (shared by Paul at Dudecraft) on a fairly major craft blog, which then led to pick ups by several other sites, and it turned out that my site was crashing from so many people trying to visit. Holy crapoly. A tiny viral internet moment!

I’ve been overwhelmed and flattered by the feedback as thousands of new readers have taken a look at 30 Pounds land. The spike will level out, I’m sure, but still! I write this blog because I enjoy it, for sure, but if I wasn’t interested in sharing with you my successes, failures, moments of confidence, and snippets of frustration, and hearing about yours in return, this site would not exist. So thanks to all of you for reading. I’m really, really happy you’re here.

Okay, sappy reflective moment over. Let’s make some dang pasta!

We’ve discussed my pasta obsession. I love it. I cook it a lot. The major part of an entire shelf in our pantry is dedicated to pasta and its friends.

(I love you pasta.)

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If there’s one thing I know about lasagne, it’s this.

My mom’s recipe is the best one.

I’ve never tasted it’s equal.

Which leads me to the second thing I know about lasagne.

Sometimes, getting exactly what you want require cheap, grocery store tomato sauce, cottage cheese, and dried pasta.

Sure, I’ve localed it up a bit with some fantastic locally raised beef and parsley from my garden, but this semi-unusual way of preparing lasagne is the way I was taught, and as we’ve already discussed, it’s the most delicious way to do so. Why break something that works so beautifully?

This is not to say that I will never foray into fancy lasagnes with handmade noodles and fresh tomato sauces, but I doubt I will ever abandon this one.

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Alright, so, I know it’s summer and heatwaves are just a part of the drill (stay cool, mid-westerners!) but… it’s really hot here these days. The kind of hot that makes the walk from my parking lot at 9:30am more like a slog through a sauna. The kind where my weather tracker icon blinks furiously at me, warning me to stay indoors. Or where a broken air conditioner constitutes a full-blown maintenance emergency.

Someone in my life is happy about it though. It seems to be the perfect kind of hot for my basil to go. absolutely. crazy.

I think I had a misconception about what growing basil was going to involve; I didn’t realize just how quickly, and voraciously, it can grow. I’ve given my seven plants (yes, I know now that I may have overestimated how many plants I would need) four significant haircuts this season, and just a few days after each one, the plants again look like they haven’t seen scissors in weeks.

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Hello again! I hope you’ll pardon my brief hiatus from posting…  I’ve spent the majority of the last ten days in cars, on planes, and briefly enjoying the company of friends and family I rarely get to see, traveling almost 4,500 miles and catching ten states along the way. But I’ve now returned to my humid North Carolina abode, so it is time to crack open the fridge and the laptop to share a recipe with you!

I’ve previously discussed my affinity for pasta, but just in case there was any doubt: I love pasta. I’ll eat it pretty much any time, any way, any day. Love. Pasta. Lately, I’ve been looking for new ways to prepare this versatile and scrumptious food, and this has quickly become one of my favorites.

I first had penne alla vodka at a dinner party after a successful campaign I worked on at my first job out of college. Both creamy and tomato-y, I was amazed I could like pasta sauce so much. Foolishly, I didn’t ask for the recipe. Never be ashamed to ask for a recipe that you like, it’s not worth missing out on later when you want to make it yourself. Anyway, I’ve tried a few different recipes for vodka sauce, and this one is just the right balance of savory, tangy, and smooth.

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My favorite dish as a kid was spaghetti with butter and parmesan cheese (the powdery kind, mind you). It was years before I would tolerate spaghetti with spaghetti sauce, and to this day, I still prefer it without.

But the first time I indulged in the miracle of the universe that is fettuccine alfredo, I was hooked. Thoroughly convinced it was the best. food. ever.

Not much has changed.

And so! For years I have searched for a recipe that achieves in my kitchen what various restaurants mysteriously create every day: a creamy, cheesy, tangled mass of warm pasta that knocks my socks off.

When I stumbled across this recipe, it was love at first sight. I HAD to try it. The first taste was enough to convince me that it was definitely worth making over and over and over. And I have!

To be sure, this dish certainly steps it up a bit from the powdered parmesan I grew up on. I’ll admit, my new found love of these cheeses takes a larger chunk of my budget than your standard block of orange cheddar. But oooh, they are worth every grated bite.

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