If by "Budget" you mean TASTELESS...

mmmmm... tasteless cooked beef.

Really, this wasn't a bad dish, I ate it happily and was left feeling full. It did it's job. But this is Not the kind of recipe that inspires Ina Garten to write cook books.

We started out shredding the carrot and potato, and then chopped the scallion and onion. My guess is that their intentions were that the carrot, potato and cottage cheese would be used as some sort of filler and would enable the cook to use less of the expensive meat. However, when you shred it so small, it doesn't take up much room. Further, it's so small that its taste is lost in the dish. Honestly, crumbled saltines would have made a better filler.

I am happy to report that during all of this chopping, we didn't once sing "She's chopping broccoli", for which I think we should be commended. (Yay Us. Giggity)

Into the bowl with the carrot, potato, onion, scallion, an egg and a mess of cottage cheese. Nothing says "this is gonna be a great dinner" like gross looking orange stuff.

Maybe adding the meat will make it look less disgusting?

Wrong again.

Okay, into the dish, into the oven, cross your fingers and let's go watch the new Netflix documentary that came today. (We watched "Wal-Mart: The high cost of low price" by Robert Greenwald; it was quite good and I highly recommend it to you.)

WARNING: The following contains graphic images that may be disturbing or offensive to some viewers

Viewer discretion is advised.

We took the cottage cheese meatloaf out of the oven and really, the first thing, the only thing, that we could notice was the shocking amount of grease that was pooled around the edges. Now, we're a couple of girls who don't mind grease. In fact, give me a greasy hamburger or steak and cheese sandwich any day of the week. But this is ridiculous to be quite honest.

Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion. Grease is the way we are feeling...

We were looking at it and figuring out how we could impress upon you the amount of grease floating around this mess.....when Mara thought showing the depth of the grease would be a good idea.

Plus there's the added benefit of soaking out some of the Fluid O' Fat.

And yet it wasn't quite enough...our meatloaf was still swimming in the stuff. It was sort of like taking a Tylenol after a bear gnaws your arm off; right idea, wrong drug.

So, Mara then suggested we get out the turkey baster, and end this madness once and for all.

And you know we measured it. Yes folks, 2/3 of a cup. Say it with me, "niiiice".

Okay, grease crisis averted, and we are back to eating the cottage cheese meatloaf. Really, it didn't taste bad, it just didn't really taste. It was literally as if we put the meat in a pan and cooked it through with some chopped onion. You couldn't taste any of the scallion, and it really could have used some garlic or any kind of spice really. And it wasn't really that budget conscious either, it was about $3 cheaper than the fantastic Swedish meatballs we had last week. Save your money folks, buy some Ramen...its cheaper, tastier and resembles actual food.

Stay tuned...more next week. We will try to have our first guest commentator and if anyone has any requests for a particular type of food, we may entertain entertaining them.

Everyone Loves A Ball of Meat

First off, yes I know that our Swedish meatballs have blobs of sour cream on top of them, but I swear, that's what the directions said.

We decided to take the safe road on this one. After all, Mara had barely survived the egg disaster with an intact gastro-intestinal system. So we selected a recipe that we thought might be ok. As it turns out, it was delicious. But seriously, how can you go wrong with meat and carbohydrates. Mara's theory is that there are several recipes in the collection that the good house-wives of the early 70s would clearly recognize and execute well, a 'gimme' if you will to galvanize them for what was to come later.

So we assembled our materials

As it turns out, not ALL of the materials. We forgot the Allspice and the sour cream, and Argie refused to go back to the grocery store.


(Argie had a bad day at work and just couldn't bear facing the traffic and the store again.)










UNTIL......................................

Mara threw the ONLY egg we had unto the floor in a fit of rage. ( She CLAIMS it was an accident.)

Did I mention that she didn't like eggs.









After going back to the store and again assembling everything we needed we started the meat balls.

This dish required both beef and sausage, a good combination any day of the week.













Meatball!!! Meatball!!! Meatball, I love Meatballs!!

I find that singing a happy-tune makes the meatball formation process go a lot easier.

Meatball!!! You are D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!








I forgot a picture of the meatballs cooking in the frying pan. But I'm sure you can use your imagination.






You know what's good with Gravy? More Gravy!

After the meatballs are cooked, we set them aside and used the drippings to make the gravy.






We cooked the egg noodles. Yes, that is a huge blob of butter.

You know what's good with butter? More Butter!








Threw the meat balls back into the gravy and coated them with the gravy.









I know this is a crappy picture of the finished product, but I never claimed to be a professional photographer. Notice the almost identical plating.








TA-DA!!! Look Ma, I finished everything on my plate. Honestly folks, this stuff was DE-LISH! Next week we promise to get back to the crazy recipes...but for now, this was a nice repast. Just you wait till we get to Sandwich Loaf! But we're saving that for a special occasion.