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When Paula Deen Lets You Down

(Now don't hate me because of that title~I adore Paula Deen! However, from now on I plan to only use her recipes that have lots of butter in them. This recipe includes no butter and clearly that was a mistake).

A couple of weeks ago I decided to include my daughter in the weekly menu planning and let her prepare a meal from one of her very own cookbooks.

We chose*Porcupine Meatballs* from her Paula Deen children's cookbook.

It was a very simple recipe consisting of meatballs made mainly of ground beef, Italian seasonings and rice. I was very impressed that The Princess dove right in with her hands making the meatballs. I know some adult women who wouldn't do that;)

The meatballs were placed on a bed of more rice and canned tomatoes, then covered and baked for something like an hour. (If you haven't picked up on it yet, I'm not sharing the recipe in its entirety here. You can thank me later).

Well, after the dish had baked for-e-ver, we took it out and prepared to dig in.

It was so disappointing.

The rice was crunchy and the texture of the meatballs was just...gross. I felt so bad for The Princess, but she was great about it. NO one liked it though.

Since there were a lot of leftovers, I just popped them in the freezer and decided to try to do something with them later.

Well, *later* came this week. I'm trying to clean out my freezer and all, so I thought I'd better deal with The Meatballs.

I had this *brilliant* idea to cut up the meatballs, dump them in my crockpot along with the rest of the rice and tomatoes, add a bit of water/broth, veggies and some pesto for extra seasoning and make a Pesto Meatball Soup.

Boy, was that a mistake! It was more like....how did my husband so graciously say it? Slop. Yeah, that's it....slop.

And although I pretended to take offense to that word, it was the perfect word for it. I couldn't even choke down more than two bites. Vince ate a bit more and The Princess tried it, but Mr. B was having none of it.

It's moments like that when you just cut your losses, apologize to your family and put it down the garbage disposal, folks. And that's what I did.

Then we all went out for burgers after Mr. B's t-ball game.

P.S. I still love you, Paula! Your peanut butter cream pie is to die for!

Comments

Liberty Boblett said…
I bought that cookbook for Gus...We will just skip the rice meatball page!
Good idea, Liberty! haha The rest of the book is really great though!
Heidi said…
LOL! We've had similar things happen at our house. I love having my girls help plan and prepare the meals - it's a great learning opportunity!
Angela said…
So sorry it didn't turn out! I was watching Paula yesterday in fact and shebwas making a lovely looking baked chicken. Lots of mayo. Maybe fat is the secretningredient in all her foods lol!
Mavis D. said…
Oh wow! I know what you mean...it's hard to throw something out with prices like they are but I'm with you. If you can't choke it down...get rid of it. We feed it to the dogs outside! LOL!
Mavis~
If we had a dog that's who it would have gone to. It was sort of painful to toss it, but it was more painful to eat...haha
I have seen that recipe before...never used it...A family friend makes the same thing except you use celery salt, onion, rice, hamburger, garlic powder, and of course the tomatoes...its yummy...oh and I brown the meatballs in butter before they go in the oven! it takes about 45 minutes...Good job on letting your daughter try a new thing, I hope to do that in a few years with my own...
Kris~
That sounds MUCH better than the recipe we made. Browning the meatballs is probably a very good idea. And there's the BUTTER...haha! I don't think I have the courage to try this recipe again though, tweaking or not:)
Jennifer said…
My daughter has that cookbook, too, and has mentioned that recipe. I'll remember to encourage her to skip it. I love the kids' excitement with cooking.
RockerMom said…
I really want to get that cookbook for my son. It's good to know which recipes to skip, though.

I was hopping around, following crew members and landed here... but I was already following you. :)
Unknown said…
Poor girl - glad she took it well. You're right - with Paula it's all about the butta...

Visiting and following from the Crew...

April
Lisa said…
We make a similar recipe, but we cook the rice first! We learned the hard way too!

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