Battle of the Meatballs

As the title of this post suggests, tonight I cooked two meatball dishes out of the appetizers chapter of Better Homes & Gardens and we tested them both.

First was Swedish Meatballs, a dish with mildly spicy meatballs in a light and savory meat sauce. (I found a similar online version here.)

It wasn't very hard to make, and I definitely cut the recipe in half (especially as I was making two separate meatball dishes). I also substituted some powdered steak seasoning for beef bouillon (which is used to make the sauce). It made it a little more spicy, which was fine by me.

Swedish meatballs

Second was Cocktail Meatballs, which was different because (1) the meatballs had veggies in them, (2) the meatballs were fried, and (3) instead of a savory sauce poured over them, they call for a cocktail dipping sauce on the side.

Cocktail meatballs

So who won? After trying them both, we liked the Swedish meatballs better, especially with the added spiciness.

On the Dave scale:

Swedish meatballs: A
Cocktail meatballs: B
Cocktail sauce for meatballs: A

On the Val scale:

Too much damn meat.

Really though, it was a fun first foray into the world of appetizers. These were dishes I had never made before, and I had a lot of fun cooking them. I would now feel much more comfortable making a big tray of meatballs and sticking fun little toothpicks in them!

Incidentally, I also made another appetizer dish, Appetizer Fruit Combo.


This one doesn't really deserve its own discrete post, because it's basically pineapple, strawberries, and cantaloupe mixed together in some juice and marmalade. It was really too watery, but the fruit was good together. I even got to use my melon baller for the first time!

So, that's three recipes done in one day! Not too shabby at all.

I've glanced at the recipes that are coming up throughout the next part of the chapter, and I'm seeing a lot of cheese balls / logs. At least four, I'm not even joking. And one of them involves A1 sauce. What have I gotten myself into...