Valentines Day Dinner

Oh I am such a romantic at heart it's sick.  I love all that lovey dovey stuff.  So for this special weekend, we wanted to get away.  And away we went, up to Lake Arrowhead.

We got there late, but I still got to see the snow over all the houses and sides of the roads!! First of all, I have only seen snow like 5 times.  So I am catching up on all that.

So we went sledding!!!!! IT WAS AWESOME!!! If I could, I would post the video of me, but here is the photo instead...

So it was super fun and I loved every minute of it!!  We left on Sunday due to the mountain life/food, and went home to make a Valentines Day dinner.

We were supposed to go to In 'N Out on the way there, but that never happened.  We were gonna do a low key dinner and do homemade burgers to get our burger craving on.  Then we went to Sunday Brunch (with champagne of course) and he ordered the BACON SANDWHICH.  Ugh I love bacon so much.  It is just soooooo tasty.   Mmmmm Pork Belly!!!!!

Sorry, so the sandwich came on a burger bun.  So now the burger idea is out.  ONTO MEATBALLS!!!

I was hoping to recreate Cecconi's meatballs.  There are just so delicious, palm sized, served in a little copper dish with marina sauce all over them.  SOOO GOOOD!!!!

So we get to the market, and they do not have ground veal or pork!!! Only turkey and beef, OH NO!!

  What is a girl to do? I chose the beef....something to do with that burger fix I need, I suppose....

And meatballs are the easist thing to make ever.  All you need to ground meat, parsely, bread crumbs, eggs and then spices etc, if you want.

Mine were the simple kind.   No extra stuff.  Maybe next time, but this was my first time making meatballs so I started out simple.

Basically put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix together with your hands.  If you want to be cool like me, you can make your own breadcrumbs.  I bought fresh bread but needed to dry it out so I toasted it.  Then put it into the food processor and viola....homemade breadcrumbs!!

Once you have your meat and everything mixed, roll them into little balls and dust lightly in flour.  Since I baked mine, I do not think this is a necessary step.  I did half in flour and half without and I could not tell a major difference.

I made a homemade tomoto sauce.  Learned one big lesson: definietly puree the sauce for meatballs.  Otherwise its a chunky sauce, which is fine and deliocus, but not what I was going for.

Emma's Tomato Sauce:

1 28 oz can of San M. Tomatoes

1 carrot

2 stalks of celery

1 onion

Garlic

chop it all up, cook it all together in oil.  Saute in the oil till onions are glassy.  Add garlic and cook for 5 min.  But in tomatoes and herbs.  Bring to a boil and then simmer.

Due to my organic food box I get from abundantharvestorganics.com (the best thing to ever happen to me), I had some turnips.  So I made us a potato and turnip mash.  I used cream, butter and milk.

To complete the dinner with my lover, I did a simple escorole salad with onions and carrots.  It was a great meal.