cooking from the garden

October 4, 2011

I realized i haven't posted a recipe in a while......Mater of fact, I've been slacking in my intentions to post recipes regularly.  It seems as though i remember after the fact, like ............when i realize how good it turned out and family says, "you should put that on your blog" and i failed to document it with pictures.  I need to make a point to take the camera out more often when I'm cooking.  I'm also bad about not measuring out ingredients, i just pour and eye things.  Guess i need to make sure i take out measuring spoons and cups and a pen and paper also, to get my recipes more precise for you all.   I promise, i do cook all this stuff i grow...........I do love to cook and i have been around lots of women in my life like my grandmothers and mother who taught me the love of cooking, especially cooking from scratch.

I will share with you a spaghetti i cooked last week that really turned out good, using some fresh homegrown ingredients from the garden.  The only thing that was missing was not having our own home grown beef.  I had to use store bought, and I'm anxiously waiting for the day that my freezer will be full of our own grassfed beef. 

For this recipe i used tomatoes that i canned this summer, green onions and garlic that we grew, and oregano that i dried in my dehydrator.  I also made homemade bread crumbs from stale bread in the dehydrator.

1 1/2 - 2 lbs ground chuck beef
1 egg beaten
1 cup bread crumbs
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/3 cup green onions
2 tbsp milk
salt and pepper to taste

Mix above ingredients into ground beef and roll into meatballs.  Heat oil in pan.  Sprinkle flour over meatballs to coat lightly.  Brown in hot oil until browned and halfway cooked. remove from pan and set aside.

Sauce:
1 onion chopped
1 bell pepper chopped
1 lrg clove of garlic
1 jar/can lrg whole tomatoes
1 can lrg tomato sauce
1 sm can tomato paste
1-2 tbsp dried oregano
1-2 tbsp basil
1-2 tbsp parsley

Brown onion, pepper and garlic in oil until wilted (pan used to brown meatballs).
Add tomatoes and cook for 20 min.  Then add tomato sauce, paste, oregano, basil and parsley, let cook for 15-20 min.

 Add meatballs and continue to simmer for 45 min to 1 hour.  If sauce get too thick you might need to add a little water during cooking.

 I find the longer you let this simmer on low the better the flavors all come together.  Serve over spaghetti noodles.


Oooops!!!!!!!!  i didn't get a finished shot of this served up on the spaghetti.  See......I told you i was horrible at remembering to get that camera out.  I think it was because i tortured everyone for hours as this simmered on the stove, and they were starving to death and jumped right into it before i could serve it up all pretty and such.......YEA!!!!! that's it.......That's what happened... 


Bon Appetit.................                           Live simple.........Sheryl