DITY Challenge 1

A few days ago, I mentioned a new challenge I created for myself; The DITY Challenge.

Why the sudden challenge? Maybe I'm "nesting" or people are starting to rub off on me but I just feel like DOING stuff. Last night, I decided to start off the challenge by making my hubby a spaghetti dinner with homemade spaghetti sauce and meatballs. This is a big deal to me. I'm a soup and grilled cheese sandwhich, kraft dinner, cereal loving, non-cooking wife.

I dislike the kitchen for 2 reasons:

1. My tastebuds hate me.
2. I have no idea how to cook.
   Do you know how hard it is to cook when you can't try what you're cooking? Things end up mushy, not seasoned right, or well done. I remember the first time I cooked asparagus. You could tie them in knots. Apparently that's bad.

My husband would add "...And you make a huge mess" to that list. Thanks.

My "spaghetti dinner" was more like rotini noodles with pasta sauce and meatballs.
Close enough.

I followed this recipe from All Recipes. My changes are in pink.

Italian Spaghetti Sauce with Meatballs

Rated: Submitted By: Jeremy Photo By: F18NavyWife Prep Time: 20 Minutes Cook Time: 2 Hours Ready In: 2 Hours 20 Minutes Servings: 6

"Easy but tasty tomato sauce with big meatballs cooks in just about two hours."

Ingredients:

MEATBALLS 1 pound lean ground beef 1 cup fresh bread crumbs 1 tablespoon dried parsley 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder 1 egg, beaten

SAUCE 3/4 cup chopped onion - added a bit more 5 cloves garlic, minced 1/4 cup olive oil 2 (28 ounce) cans whole peeled tomatoes - 1 can diced no salt/1 can crushed 2 teaspoons salt - maybe 0.5 - 1 tsp 1 teaspoon white sugar - a whole lot more 1 bay leaf 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste 3/4 teaspoon dried basil 1/2 teaspoon pepper - none, we're out.

Directions:

1.

In a large bowl, combine ground beef, bread crumbs, parsley, Parmesan, 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, garlic powder and beaten egg. Mix well and form into 12 balls. Store, covered, in refrigerator until needed. I rolled them in flour and gave them a quick fry to seal in the juices. I read it in the review. There was something weird about putting raw meatballs in a sauce for 30 minutes.

2.

In a large saucepan over medium heat, saute onion and garlic in olive oil until onion is translucent. Stir in tomatoes, salt, sugar and bay leaf. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer 90 minutes. Stir in tomato paste, basil, 1/2 teaspoon pepper and meatballs and simmer 30 minutes more. Serve. ________________________________________________________________________________ Now. I can see where I went wrong here. 1. Not enough salt. Apparently, minimizing sodium content doesn't work for all recipes. 2. No pepper. Enough said. 3. I should have used either 2 cans whole tomatoes, 2 cans diced, or 2 cans crushed. In the end, the sauce was way too acidic so I threw in a bunch of sugar to cut it down. It felt like something was missing but it turned out OK. We've definitely had better but it wasn't bad. In the end, I'm just happy I made something I hadn't made before and that my husband didn't get sick. If anyone knows of a good spaghetti sauce recipe, let me know!