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I don’t know what it is, but mini anything always seems to delight.
Roll it into a ball and you have a recipe that gets that ooh’ahhh kind of response all home cooking Moms like to hear.
These little beauties are a timeless classic. Made with Real Food ingredients and regular ol’ budget beef mince – you can’t go wrong. They can be used in tons of recipes, frozen for another day or packed into tomorrows lunchbox. A Winner all round!
I was watching an Episode of Mary Berry a couple nights ago. Glass of wine in hand and kids in bed. Yip. That’s what I call a good night these days.
She was preparing a meal to celebrate her 60th wedding anniversary with some friends (Marriage Goals Right here!). As a little bit of a laugh, she also made a few dishes that she had cooked for her first wedding anniversary celebration. Exactly how she would have made them back then. It was really crazy to see how her cooking style has changed over the years. She unapologetically served up the 1950’s style pinky-pureed salmon dip and canned soggy asparagus on fried bread canapes to her obliging guests and had a giggle along the way.
I don’t know. For some reason that giggle resonated with me. Everyone has that real life stuff going on that we just don’t get to see often. And when you do, it’s precious.
I spend a lot of time on the Internet as a Blogging Mom and it’s easy to get sucked in to the concept that everything should be perfect – or at least appear to be that way to everyone reading your words or looking at your pictures. Truth is though – real life just isn’t perfect. Most of the time it’s messy. Very very messy! It’s this messy bit that makes it fun. And hard.
An average dinner time is full on and loud in our house. Me cooking. Hubby getting home. Mud everywhere. Lambs lined up at the door. Couple kids asking me questions at the same time. Telling me about their day, sometimes about friend problems, sometimes about algebra, always at the same time.
Then there’s the arguing or complaining. There is at least one – often two – family members that aren’t happy with dinner choice. No. you can never please everyone.
The Twins (Spinner and Glimmer) waiting at the door for dinner.
The Twins (Spinner and Glimmer) waiting at the door for dinner.
When I was making these meatballs for dinner. It was actually dinner time. The kitchen was actually a mess. The kids were actually hungry. I started panicking because the light was fading (this happens at dinner time) and I needed semi decent light for my images to work because I take all my pictures with my phone. I ended up balancing a bread board on my dirty dish engulfed kitchen sink to try raise the plate of meatballs up just to catch the last bit of fading light.
The Family was impatiently waiting. My kids get used to Mom taking photos of dinner. They don’t even comment anymore. They just step out of frame.
And yet with all that going on in the background – I end up with a single still image. Of meatballs. You don’t see my messy kitchen or hear the bickering noise. Just a picture of the meatballs we ended up eating for dinner. Which were amazing by the way :) I topped them with an Organic Pasta Sauce
(out of a jar), popped in oven for around 10 minutes and served on top of spaghetti. And had some left over for school lunches in the morning.
I read somewhere that Social Media means we get to compare ourselves to other peoples highlight reels. It’s so true. It’s hard not to compare yourself to others. How do we stack up against other Moms? How do our kids stack up against other kids? Our brains want to know how we are measuring up compared to everyone else. I do it. My children do it too. We have to remind ourselves that our goal isn’t to compete with anyone else. Our ultimate goal is to be better today than we were yesterday, and have a plan in place to help us become even better tomorrow.
There were days when I felt like I was failing in so many ways as a Mom. I couldn’t even get my children to take a bite of the vegetables on their plate. Many a dinner time ended in tears – either me or the kids.
I still have two fussy eaters who can make dinner times pretty difficult. New recipes get inspected and prodded. But everyday gets a little better. The list of vegetables and foods they eat keeps growing. There is a little less fuss at the dinner table. We can go out to dinner at friends and my children will give everything a good go (often needing a hard quiet stare from me).
There are also days when I just can’t seem to get anything right. I spend hours making a new recipe and it flops (my first and final attempt at cauliflower pizza crust – YUCK!). Or it burns while I’m outside chasing a runaway cows (true story). And we end up getting take out. Or eating toast.
But just like Mary Berry serving up her 1950’s canapes and giggling. All each of us can do it to try and make small ‘better than before’ choices because one day we will step back and see how far you’ve come. And then giggle. I think that’s the most important part.
Clean Eating Mini Meat Balls
Ingredients
- 800 g minced beef
- 2 Eggs
- ½ cup wholemeal breadcrumbs
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 onion diced and fried.
- Olive oil for cooking
Instructions
- heat up a skillet on the stove.
- fry onions in some oil until softened.
- Mix all ingredients together including onions in a large mixing bowl.
- Add oil to skillet and fry teaspoon sized balls of mince mixture in batches of 10 - 12 per pan load. This was you can turn easily to brown all over.
- Takes around 5 minutes of frying per batch.
