Recipe: Parmesano Meatballs

Home-made meatballs are so much more satisfying than buying a bag of frozen meatballs in the grocery store. With this recipe, you can make enough meatballs for five meals, and stick 'em in the freezer. You'll be glad you did when you come home from work and pop 'em in the microwave. Combine these with a batch of my Hearty Italian Spaghetti Sauce recipe, and you'll have a delicious meal within minutes after arriving home from work.

Meatballs are just meatballs, but these meatballs are filled with Parmesan cheese, too! Everything is better with cheese, right? The cheese oozes out of the meatballs when you bake them, and again when you reheat them after freezing them! They're not low in calories, but boy are they ever tasty!

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground Italian sausage
4 medium eggs
1/2 cup bread crumbs *
1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp oregano
1 1/2 tsp chopped garlic

* I usually use Italian style bread crumbs, but regular bread crumbs are fine

Before you get started, turn on the oven and set it at 325°F. This will allow the oven to heat up while you're mixing the ingredients and making the meatballs. It'll probably be ready right about the time you'll need it.

Place the ground beef and the Italian sausage into a large mixing bowl. Using your hands, knead the meat to mix it together. (I use disposable plastic gloves that I bought at a restaurant supply store, so I don't end up with meat sticking to my hands.). Work the meat so that you get an even mix of the two meats throughout the mixture.

Crack the eggs and add them to the meat mixture along with all of the remaining ingredients (the bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, salt, oregano, and garlic). Knead the mixture again to ensure that all of these ingredients are thoroughly spread throughout. You wouldn't want all of the garlic to be in only one or two meatballs!

Once the mixture is mixed to your satisfaction, it's time to make the meatballs...

Tear off some of the meat mixture and begin rolling it between your palms. (Again, I use disposable plastic gloves.) The objective is to end up with a meatball which is about the size of a golf ball. If you grabbed too much meat mixture, throw some back into the bowl; if you didn't grab enough, get some more! As you make more of these, you'll get better at grabbing the correct amount of meat on the first try. If you have a good kitchen scale, you can weigh out 50g (which is about 1 3/4 ounces), but I usually don't weight them. 

Place each of the completed golf ball-sized meatballs on to a baking tray. You can use a flat cookie sheet, but it's better to have a tray with edges because some grease will cook out of the meatballs and you don't want that grease to drip all over your oven. 

You should have about 24-28 meatballs when you've finished.

Place the tray into your pre-heated oven and cook for about 25-27 minutes.  Watch them carefully as the end of time approaches - you don't want to end up with dry meatballs!

After cooking is completed, allow them to cool and then divide them into meal-sized portions for freezing.  I use quart-sized freezer bags and place five meatballs in each bag. You can freeze whatever quantity you'll need for a single meal.  Whatever odd number of meatballs remains after dividing into fives does not get frozen: it's a chef's sample for immediate consumption for purposes of quality control!

California County Seats

I was watching the 49ers play the Seahawks the other night, and since the game was so lousy, my mind was wandering onto other topics.

The game was played in the 49ers home stadium, Levis Stadium, which is located in Santa Clara, California. The city of Santa Clara happens to be located in Santa Clara County, and so, you might think that Santa Clara is the seat of Santa Clara County.

Interestingly (interesting to me, anyway), Santa Clara is not the county seat; San Jose is the seat of Santa Clara County. It occurred to me that there are a bunch of counties in California with a city of the same name located within that county but for whatever reason that city was not chosen to be the seat of the county which shares its name.

Of course, there's no requirement that a county seat have the same as the county itself; in fact, California may be unusual in that so many county seats do have the same name as the county. This includes many of the largest and most well-known counties such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Fresno. In all, 18 of California's 58 counties have the same name for the seat and county.*

Thus, I think that it is unusual for a county to contain a city with the same name as the county but that city not be the seat.  Here's the list I compiled instead of paying attention to the 49ers game:


AMADOR - The seat of Amador County is Jackson. Amador City is about six miles north of Jackson on old highway 49.

ALAMEDA - The seat of Alameda County is Oakland. The city of Alameda is adjacent to Oakland, lying to the west on Alameda Island.

IMPERIAL - The seat of Imperial County is El Centro. The city of Imperial is about a dozen miles to the north.

MENDOCINO - The seat of Mendocino County is Ukiah. While Ukiah lies inland along US 101, the city of Mendocino is on the coast.

MONTEREY - The seat of Monterey County is Salinas. Like Ukiah (see above), Salinas lies along US 101 while Monterey is on the coast.

ORANGE - The seat of Orange County is Santa Ana. The city of Orange is adjacent to Santa Ana.

SAN BENITO - The seat of San Benito County is at Hollister. The tiny hamlet of San Benito is in a very remote part of the county, 35 miles south of Hollister and east of Pinnacles National Park.

SAN MATEO - The seat of San Mateo County is Redwood City. San Mateo is about a seven miles north.

SANTA CLARA - The seat of Santa Clara County is San Jose. The city of Santa Clara is just north of San Jose.

SONOMA - The seat of Sonoma County is Santa Rosa. The city of Sonoma can be found about 20 miles to the southeast of Santa Rosa, closer to the Napa Valley.

TULARE - The seat of Tulare County is Visalia. The city of Tulare is fifteen miles southwest of Visalia.




Here are two more which don't quite meet the criteria, but I threw them in because they fit the theme.  These two are cities in California which have the same name as a county, but these two are not located within the county which shares their name.  Of course, these two are not the county seat.


ALPINE - Alpine County is located south of Lake Tahoe, a sparsely-populated county, high in the Sierras and far off the beaten path for most Californians. The seat of Alpine County is Markleeville. On the other hand, the city of Alpine is a suburb of San Diego, several hundred miles from Alpine County.


SAN JOAQUIN - San Joaquin County is south of Sacramento, around Stockton.  The city of San Joaquin is found on the dusty westside of Fresno County, about 100 miles south of Stockton.


* I counted Nevada City as a match with Nevada County but did not count Lakeport, which is the seat of Lake County.

Recipe: Hearty Italian Sausage Spaghetti Sauce

This recipe will make a whole pot of sauce. I like to divvy it up into smaller packages to freeze them so I can come home after draining day at work and have a delicious spaghetti dinner in only about fifteen minutes. I have a separate recipe for decadent Italian Parmesano meatballs that ooze Parmesan cheese, and I freeze those in individual meal size packages, too.

You can make this recipe with less than thirty minutes of actual kitchen activity and then a couple hours of simmering. I usually make it while watching a game -- in other words, it's time I would have completely wasted sitting on the couch. Now I spend a little time watching the game from the kitchen, and then I sit on the couch and watch the game while the sauce simmers, with the knowledge that I'm being productive! By the way, it makes the house spell delicious, too.

When you come home too tired to do anything, you'll be happy that you have a great meal in your freezer.

2 28 oz cans diced tomatoes
2 28 oz cans tomato sauce
1 6 oz can tomato paste
1 can chopped olives (optional)

1 tbsp chopped garlic
1/3 yellow onion  sliced
1/2 lb (8 oz) fresh mushrooms
3 tbsp olive oil
1 lb ground Italian sausage

1 tbsp oregano
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
chopped fresh basil

2 cups water


To get started, cut up the fresh veggies: cut up the onion and chop up the basil.

The size of onions varies widely, but you should be looking for about a 1/2 cup of onions after cutting.

For the basil, I usually buy the 0.66 oz package (18g) at the supermarket, and I use half of it for this recipe, which will yield about 1/4 cup of chopped basil when packed pretty well.

Start the sauce;
In a stewpot or crock pot, pour in:

• diced tomotoes
• tomato sauce
• tomato paste
• olives
• chopped fresh basil
• oregano
• red pepper flakes

Turn on low heat. Stir. Continue simmering

Saute other veggies:

In a medium frying pan, add olive oil and warm on medium heat.  Add in:

• mushrooms
• sliced onions
• garlic

Cook for 5-7 minutes, until the mushrooms and onions are soft. Add to sauce.

Cook sausage:

Using the same frying pan that you used for saute (fewer dishes to wash, right?), cook the sausage until brown. Break it up into crumbles as you cook it. It will take about five minutes for the sausage to brown and there won't be much grease to pour off. Add the meat to your pot of sauce.

Stir well.

Now, add the water and let it simmer for a couple hours.  Just stir it occasionally...maybe every half hour or so.

Recipe: Texas Tumbleweeds Sweet Chili

Mary Poppins sang about a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down, This recipe doubles down on that strategy and includes two spoonfuls of sugar, which makes this chili a delight as it goes down!

You'll need a saucepan to brown the hamburger, and a slow cooker (like a Crock-Pot) to simmer your chili. If you don't have a slow cooker, you may use a big pan, and, if you're using a pan for the simmering, it's perfectly acceptable to use the same pan to brown the hamburger! (Fewer dishes to wash) I like to use my Crock Pot because it's easier to regulate the low heat for simmering, and I can just put the whole pan right into the refrigerator.


2 lbs hamburger
Garlic salt
Pepper
4 tbsp chopped garlic
1/2 cup chopped yellow onion
2 cans diced tomatoes (14.5 oz cans)
1 can tomato sauce (28oz)
1 can black beans
1 can kidney beans
1 can red beans
1 can pinto beans
1 can corn (15 oz)
2 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp cumin
2 tbsp sugar
1 cup water

Substitutions:
Many grocery stores sell ground beef labelled as chili meat. The only real difference that I see is that they use a cap on the grinder with larger holes in it..and then charge more for it.
You can mix and match on the varieties of beans: don't like black beans? Omit them and use two cans of kidney beans instead of one. It's up to you! Basically, any combination of four cans of beans will do the trick.

If you want a wee bit of a kick, you can chop up a little cilantro and add it to the simmering chili. Don't be afraid to experiment.

1. Brown the hamburger.

Put the hamburger into a saucepan and cook on medium-high heat. Season the meat with garlic salt and pepper. As the burger begins to cook, add the chopped garlic and the chopped onions. Crumble the meat as it cooks. When the meat is browned, this step is complete, even if it looks like the onions need more cooking -- they'll finish when the chili stews.

2. Add the canned ingredients

While the meat is browning, open up all those cans! Diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, the corn, and all of those beans. Pour each into the slow-cooker. (If you're cooking the meat in the same pan that you'll be using to simmer the chili, obviously, you'll have to wait for the meat to finish before you can add these canned ingredients.)

3. Add the remaining ingredients

Stir in the chili powder, cumin, and sugar, add the water, and stir the while mixture. Add the meat/garlic/onion mixture and stir again.

4. Simmer on low for four hours.

5. Enjoy your meal!

Garnish with more chopped onions, shredded cheese, and/or sour cream.

My Geographic Extremes - September 2015

NOTE: UPDATED FOR 2016
Link here



I love to travel.  Even so, I still haven't managed to get out of North America; the closest I've come is the island of Curaçao, about 25 miles north of the Venezuelan coast.  Interestingly, three of the four compass point extremes are located on islands.

Here are my current geographic extremes (as of September 25, 2015):

NORTHERNMOST: 51.45° N

On the Trans-Canada Highway, about 8 km NW of Lake Louise, Alberta

51° 27' 30.2652" N
116° 16' 7.3848" W
Saturday, May 23, 2015

Plot on map

SOUTHERNMOST: 12.07° N

Caracas Baai, Curaçao

12° 4' 8.439" N
68° 51' 42.1524"

Tuesday, June 13, 2007

Plot on map

EASTERNMOST: 62.68° W

South Friars Beach, St Kitts

17° 16' 23.304" N
62° 40' 24.3042" W
Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Plot on map

WESTERNMOST: 158.10° W

Haleiwa, Oahu, Hawaii

21° 35' 35.448" N
158° 6' 12.5892" W
Monday, February 14, 2011

Plot on map


Conversions from Decimal to Degrees /Minutes/Seconds:
http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/DDDMMSS-decimal.html

Six Things You'll Love About Living in Utah

This post was written from the perspective of someone who grew up in the Central Valley of California and moved to Utah. 


1. Awesome Scenery. Let's face it, it's beautiful here. Every day, you wake up and see the sun rising over mountains in the east and then watch it set over mountains in the west. The mountains are so prominent that you become numb to just how special it is; it almost becomes "ho-hum" scenery because you see it every single day. The rest of the state is filled with amazing red rock formations and five national parks that people come from all over the world to see.  We've got it all within a couple hours drive!

2. Few 100° days.  From May to September, people in the San Joaquin Valley are battered by scorching heat. Triple digit heat can be recorded on any day, and it's not considered to be an anomaly until it gets above 110°. After a couple of summers along the Wasatch Front, you'll become a heat wimp and start turning on your air conditioner when temperatures climb into the upper eighties. I'm not saying that it never gets above 100° in Salt Lake but you can nearly always count those days with the fingers on one hand.

3. Mormons. They take a bad wrap from some quarters, but, let's face it: Mormons make Utah the great state that it is. You don't have to be Mormon to live here -- I'm not -- but give the Mormons props for what they've given us. We have a clean state with a low crime rate, built by people who work hard. Utahans have more kids per family than any other state, and that makes it a great place to raise kids.  You can count on tons of family-friendly places, and lots of other kids for your kids to play no matter where you live.

4. The Mountain Time Zone.  Two hours behind Eastern Time, it's perfectly situated so that live events are televised at a convenient hour but don't keep you up until midnight. In California, World Series games begin at 5:07pm, which is too early to get home before the first pitch.  On the east coast, Sunday night football games regularly stretch out to end after midnight, which is too late for fans who have a job.  The Mountain Time Zone is the Goldilocks time zone: not too early, and not too late.

5. Great Air Service. Because we have a Delta hub in Salt Lake we have nonstop service to Europe, Mexico, Canada, and all over the country. The presence of all other major carriers keeps fares reasonable. No more long drives to San Francisco or Los Angeles to get a decent fare. Parking is cheap, too: only $9 per day at the airport and even less at some of the nearby private lots.

6. Outdoors Lifestyles. With incredible mountains so close by, recreation opportunities are everywhere, and lots people who live in Utah avail themselves of those opportunities. Skiing, hiking, snowboarding, snowshoeing, running, hunting, camping, boating, mountain biking, you name it! If it can be done outdoors, Utahns are doing it!