Crock Pot Cheese Stuffed Italian Meatballs and Parmesan Crusted French Fries

I like to use my crock pot as much as possible on Sundays.  Otherwise, we end up so hungry after church that we go out to eat instead of making something at home.  I'm making a real effort to eat out a lot less, so I'm doing as much preparing ahead of time as possible.  I enjoy cooking, and with all the great ideas on Pinterest, I have an endless supply of ideas.  Problem is I can never follow a recipe as written.  I like to do my own thing.  (I have the same problem with homeschool curriculum, so I guess it's just me.)

Anyway, these Cheese Stuffed Italian Meatballs are based on the recipe found here.  But I did make several changes.  Here's what I did.  Don't ask me for exact measurements. I don't typically measure.  Kinda like your grandma, and you liked her food, so just go with it.  First off, when I cook, I generally make about three different meals - one for the baby, one for me, and one for my husband and the eight and four year olds.  The baby has allergies to nuts, eggs, wheat and dairy, and I'm on a very low carb diet, so I have to adjust for all these people ;)  It's a fun challenge.

So, these meatballs contain both extremely lean elk burger and not at all lean pork sausage :)  I did most of my prep work Saturday night so Sunday church prep would go smoothly.  I began by pulling a chunk of burger from each and put in a baggy for the baby.  I had to fry that up before we ate, but it only took a few minutes.  If I would have had a little oven safe bowl, I would have put the meat in that inside the crock pot, protected from the other contaminants ;)  I bought some little bowls for just that purpose Sunday afternoon. 

Okay, back to the recipe... I measured out eight ounces of the burger for myself - mostly elk, but a little pork too, and put that in a separate bowl.  I put one egg in my bowl and two eggs in the main batch.  Then I added 4 tablespoons of parmesan cheese to the main batch and two into mine.  I added all the spices - roughly 1/2 teaspoon of each for the main batch - salt, pepper, oregano and basil.  (I used garlic salt and a pizza herb seasoning blend in mine).  I mixed it all together - and to the main batch added Italian bread crumbs - maybe about 1/2 cup.  Mine got no bread crumbs, and they held up just as firm as the others.  

I picked up walnut sized balls of the meat mixture and pressed a 1/2 inch cube of mozzarella cheese into the center.  Then I covered them with plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator.  This wasn't part of the recipe, but I didn't want to mess with making meatballs on Sunday morning.  There's never enough time then anyway. On Sunday morning, I popped them into the crock pot (gently :) and poured a can of spaghetti sauce over the top of the meatballs and turned the crock pot on high.  They cooked about 4 hours before we had lunch, then stayed on "keep warm" all day and my husband and older boys had them again for dinner.  We still had 11 left over after that, so I froze them, and have been told to "definitely" make them again.
 

 Now my meatballs were a little different, as was my sauce, thanks to wanting to cut the carbs.  As I mentioned, I didn't use any bread crumbs in mine, and I also didn't do them in a crock pot.  If I had a little crock pot, I would have used it, but I didn't so these went into a small ceramic dutch oven, which I put in the oven with the timer set.  I was going to leave them without sauce, but at the last minute decided to add part of a plain can of tomato sauce.  Then I figured there ought to be some seasoning on it, so I sprinkled some of the seasoning I used on the potatoes over the top. (That recipe is next...)

That turned out to be a mistake.  These were W-A-Y too salty ... and I love salt.  They were almost inedible (most people probably would have said they were inedible).  The meatballs were good, but I should have gone with my first thought and skipped the sauce.  Not to mention, it made the pot a huge pain to clean up.  

 Okay, so on to the potatoes.  This is another Pinterest recipe, but for some reason the pin doesn't go to the link today.  Anyway, this called for thyme, oregano, old bay seasoning, salt, pepper garlic powder and parmesan cheese.  I did the baby's without parmesan - they are on the left side of the pan.  The rest of the family's were on the right.  I cut the potatoes into wedges, tossed them with olive oil, then sprinkled the seasoning blend over them and tossed to coat.  They were placed in the oven with my meatballs, and ended up cooking around 45 minutes at 425 degrees.

They were perfectly well done when I pulled them out.  My husband liked them, but none of the boys would eat them.  And they absolutely love fries.  Eventually the baby ate his, but his eyes watered the entire time.  I'm not sure if it was the Old Bay or the pepper ... or both.  Either way, next time I'll go with my gut and do my own seasoning.  I probably won't use the Italian seasonings or the Old Bay, and I'll go lighter on the pepper.  Maybe I'll just use Lowry's or Ranch dressing mix - which is always a hit, but then those are completely different recipes, aren't they?  Anyway, it worked well to make my own fries in the oven, and I'll definitely be doing that again.

We Got Our Christmas Tree Today

 Picking out a Christmas tree is always a huge family tradition for us.  The eight year old was especially excited about it this year.  We had a good hearty breakfast then headed out to find a tree.  When we started out, it was a blizzard.  The snow was so heavy that we had a really hard time seeing the trees.  It was worse than the photo shows.

 But within a few minutes, it cleared up and the sun came out, and for most of the day we had nice, sunny weather.  The first thing the boys did was to get in a snowball fight ... instigated by the eight year old, but gladly joined in by Dad. ;)  Our older two would have enjoyed this.

 A shovel is never a good sight when out in the snow.  Or maybe I should say it was a good thing to see, considering we got stuck (briefly) while turning around.  It only took a tiny bit of shoveling.  I came prepared.  I brought a book for just this purpose.  But by the time I put the snow suits and mittens on the younger two and snapped a couple pictures, we were no longer stuck.  So the book was unnecessary.  But given past experiences, I think I'll keep one with me in the future too. ;)

 This was the baby's first real time to get to play in the snow.  He was too little last year.  I got him all suited up, but then realized we had forgotten to grab his snow boots, which I had sitting by the door.  Ugh.  He didn't seem to mind.

 He wasn't sure what to think at first, but once we got going, he loved it.  In fact, he stayed out the whole time, and I even packed him up the very steep hill, and he loved it.

 One advantage to living in extreme rural Wyoming is that your kids can play in the road with no danger of being run over.  In fact, all day long, no other vehicles were on this road while we were there.

 The older two made snow angels... or in the four year old's case, more of a snow scramble :)  There was a lot of wiggling, but no discernible shape in the end.

 We checked out several trees, but this one didn't pass hubby's inspection.  He's VERY picky about Christmas trees.  I would have picked one in the first 10 minutes... but the last time they let me pick one, it was so bad that my husband and daughter actually wired extra branches onto it.  So, yeah.  I'm no longer allowed to pick the tree.

 Honestly after all the fire safety trainings I've been through for my daycare licensing, I would have been happy with a fake tree, but the eight year old had his heart set on a real one, and on the tradition of going to find one.  It is a great fun family event, and always very memorable.

 We climbed clear up the hillside - which as I mentioned was very steep.  We originally left the four year old below, but he wanted to come up, so I had the eight year old watch the baby while I went back for him.  But he refused to walk in the deep snow, so I had to carry him the whole way.  We kept falling because it was so steep, which would make me drop him in the snow.  He didn't like that at all.  He was really mad at me and when we got all the way up the hill he just wanted to go back to the truck.  The eight year old had an area pretty well packed down, so I sat the four year old down, which he did not like at all.  Meanwhile the baby was trying to crawl down the steep hillside, and making good progress at it.

 Dad thought he had found a possible tree and wanted us to come see it.  Well, that meant I had to get both the baby and the four year old over there.  Neither of them would try to walk or let me set them down, so I ended up with one under each arm, trudging through nearly a foot of snow.  Finally Dad got back over to us and packed the four year old down to the truck.  See the snowman?  People who had been there before us made that.

 This is my let - including my completely soaked denim skirt and my foot.  Or you'll have to trust me that my foot is down there.  You can't see the top of my boots either ... which means snow kept going down my boot.  It took me a couple of hours to warm up once we got home...

 This is my favorite picture from the day.  After Dad took the four year old down to the truck, I was trying to pack the baby up another hill to see another tree.  It was so steep that the only way I could get up the hill was to toss the baby into a snowbank up ahead of me, then crawl a couple steps, pick him up and toss him again.  He thought it was great fun.  It worked well too - he couldn't get anywhere, and it looked incredibly comfortable - almost like a form fitting recliner :)  Every time I was trying to carry him and climb, I would fall and we would both end up in the snow.  He would good-naturedly sigh, then say, "up!"  He must have thought I was nuts.

 I let Dad pack him down the hill.  I was afraid I would fall forward and really hurt him.  We both ended up on our butts more times than we could count, but we were having a good time... apart from being soaked ... and apart from the fact that my skirt was a little bit too big and every time i would try to step uphill, I would step on it, and nearly remove it from it's proper place.  Aah, memories.  Someday I will laugh at this.

 You can see in this picture how far above the truck we were - and not more too far as the crow flies, so maybe you can get an idea of how steep this was.

We got back to the truck, and drove on looking for the "perfect" tree.  Thankfully we found it right near the road!

 The eight year old wanted to cut it down himself.  Haha.  We let him try... for quite awhile.  Good life lesson.  Not everything that you think you know how to do is as easy as you think it will be...

 Anyway, it finally got chopped down, and we carried it down to the truck.

 We loaded it up and strapped it down, and headed home.

And here's the best part.  On the way home, all three boys fell sound asleep ;)

We haven't put the tree in the house yet.  I'm going to have to go out to the shed to get all our decorations and we were exhausted enough already.  Maybe we'll get it up tomorrow or maybe it will be later.  I have to go to Jackson Hole tomorrow after church for soymilk and to hit the dollar store for stocking stuffers.

After all the tree gathering, we headed over to Bugga's to watch the Nebraska - Wisconsin game.  I think I could have played better defense than Nebraska, who apparently forgot to bring their defensive players to the game.  Oh well.  Better luck next year.  At least K State won.  That was a game worth watching... which is what we did in lieu of witnessing the massacre of Nebraska.  (Actually Bugga has two televisions, so we muted the Nebraska game and put it on the small one, and watched the K-State game on the big screen. :)

Thank You Grandma!

 The four year old's birthday gift arrived the other day (and I'm just getting around to posting about it.)  He was a lot more excited than the pictures show.  He wears the construction hat non-stop, and is always working on his truck.  His baby brother loves the screw gun too, but only gets to play with it when his brother is in bed ;)

 He barely had the box open before the hat was on his head.

Here's a random picture to throw in here, but it doesn't really fit anywhere.  We've been having baths about every morning and most evenings too - especially for the baby.  His allergies have caused him some problem this last week and he's had overflowing diapers every morning ... like huge messes, not just a bit, but all the way down into the feet of his sleepers...yeah... too much information, I know.  Anyway, baths have been a necessity, but since he's stopped having the problem, he now thinks this is what we do when we get up.  So we do.  And if the four year old is up when the bath water gets turned on, he comes running too.  I put the eight year old on the task of making sure nobody drowns - as this all happens while I have a house full of daycare kids.  You can tell by the yawn on the eight year old that he's still sleepy.  Anyway, I wanted to get this picture into our family yearbook, so there you have it ;)

Birthday!

 Last Wednesday our three year old turned four :)

 It was a pretty low-key day, being the day before Thanksgiving.

We took him to dinner, opened presents and visited Papa and Bugga.

 I kind of cheated this year as far as gifts went.  I had these three in the closet most of the year, so I didn't do any shopping right before his birthday.

 It didn't matter to him.

This truck and trailer are toys I won at a fund raiser for some friends.  I tucked it away in the closet, figuring it would be a good gift for one of the boys.

 The turtle mixer was a toy he picked out himself.  We took him to our local pharmacy/gift shop, and he got to pick out one toy.  He had received some money from his Sunday School teacher, and we paid the difference.

 Grandpa sent a card that had money in it too.  I took him to the Cowboy Shop and let him pick out a new pair of boots with that money plus some.  This has become a tradition for him.
 

His brothers all enjoyed playing with the new toys too.

On his birthday, he suddenly developed an interest in drawing.  He wasn't real interested in it before, but loves it now.  He always wants me to get him the box of markers, and then only uses the black one.

 You can see his new boots (sort of) in this picture.  The tops are a dark green color.  Very classy.

We didn't do a birthday cake, because this kid doesn't eat cake or ice cream.  We have this problem every year, and one year even made him birthday cookies ... which if I remember right, he didn't eat.  And since the next day was Thanksgiving, I just made a dessert for him to take to Papa and Bugga's for the big dinner.  The four year old picked it out (from a picture online).  It was a brownie mix made like a cookie, with cream cheese and fruit on top.  He didn't eat it, but everyone else thought it was good.  Oh well. There are worse things than a kid not wanting to eat dessert.