Thank you everyone for coming out to celebrate Dad’s 81st birthday! We had a great time sharing it with all of  you, and below are a few images from the evening as well as the recipe for the meatballs that we served as part of the dinner.

Mike & Jen’s Mighty Meaty Meatballs

Ingredients:

• 1 package of ground beef (market grind if you can, lean if you must)
• 1 package ground pork (2 if you are feeding a lot of folks)
• 1 egg (optional)
• 2 slices white bread (avoid rye/whole wheat etc) -or- 1 1/2 cups of breadcrumbs
• cream (heavy or whipping – of course whipping is better)
• salt/pepper/oregano/garlic powder

Instructions

• In a large bowl, combine the bread sliced into cubes (or the breadcrumbs) with enough cream to almost cover
• Let sit for at least 15 minutes until it’s all nice and mushy
• Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees
• Add the meat, the egg and about 1 TBs of salt, pepper, oregano and garlic powder. Using your (clean) hands, mix it all together.
• Heat 2 TBs of olive oil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat
• Into the pan put a small patty of the meat and cook until done, about 5-6 minutes.
• Taste the sample patty for seasoning and adjust as needed. Repeat cooking a sample until the seasoning is as you like it
• Into an oven proof dish with tall enough sides (we use a rectangular glass pan), put the meatballs. Note that it doesn’t really matter if they are touching, they will cook evenly
• Bake them in the oven for 30-40 minutes until they are cooked
• Take them out of the dish and drain them on some paper towel (there will be quite a bit of liquid generated). From there you can fry them in a bit of oil if you want to crisp up the outside, warm them in some tomato sauce, or eat them as is.