GREAT meatball marinade (very easy!)

[AlecBGreen]

equal amounts of:

Sriracha (a spicy Thai garlic sauce)
grape jelly

Try it and you'll never use another! Its sweet and spicy and oh-so-good. Im gonna make it this week with my ground venison. Ill post an update once Ive recovered from my meat-induced coma.

[The empressof all]

1. Oh My Goodness

I do the meatballs with the jelly and Heinz Chili sauce but never thought of using SriRacha. I'm so gonna do that. Have you ever tried Mai Ploy It's a Thai spicy/sweet chili sauce that's great for dipping, or cooking chicken with. I'm so going to try that with meatballs now too. Thanks for the inspiration!

[elleng]

15. Now I have to try to remember what it was with grape jelly,

and for WHY???? and WHEN????

[eleny]

16. Mini meatballs in the crockpot with grape jelly and chili sauce

For parties. :hi:

[elleng]

17. Never had a crock pot.

Maybe it was someone else's recipe. THINKING!

[eleny]

18. I've got a crock pot but never made the recipe

I only read about it here in C&B.

[elleng]

19. There's definitely something familiar about the grape jelly thing.

My daughter has a crock pot she's never used. I think I may try to borrow it from her.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

2. Am I back in college?

Oh, man, if that's so, I am SO going to ...................

Wait.

What?

Sriracha instead of Heinz chili sauce or ketchup? Kind of sharp, but nice. We used to use equal parts of Welch's grape jelly, Heinz chili sauce or ketchup (whatever we had or could afford), and brown mustard.

And we never had meatballs, but we did have can upon can of Vienna sausages. (We were poor students and the little cans were easy to boost. Forgive us.)

God, they were good. What is really odd is that I bet they're still delicious.

Do we ever grow up?

[The empressof all]

3. I feel old as the hills today T la B

I'm glum for no specific reason...too old to have PMS.... I'm trying to resist going on a binge fest. The idea of eating a crock pot full of spicy meatballs...I'm thinking half mai ploy half Sri Racha....seems extremely appealing. Instead I'll eat a bowl of brocolli slaw and a Morningstar Farms Asian Veg patty. I ate by butternut squash ration for the day...... Having a non funtioning metabolism sucks dirt..... Hey....would you eat a bowl of ice cream for me....

[Tangerine LaBamba]

4. Oh, empress, honey .............

It's a whole bunch of things, I suspect. I'm in the same kind of mood. With all that's going on around here, I managed to fall asleep twice today, just zonked out. The ice cream is gone, and there are no plans to replace it, since it's just impossible to keep it on hand - it's instantly gone.

I fixed a gorgeous borchst. Ate two bowls. Loved it. Now, the idea of it just grosses me out. Into the freezer tomorrow.

As for that big batch of pickled beets, onions, and hard-boiled eggs - eh, I don't know what's gonna happen with that.

I'm craving animal protein, which is probably healthier for me, given the meds I take. Still, sometimes everything just goes into a culinary funk. You know?

Yeah, you know. What's with the metabolism, if I may be so curious? I take prednisone, which does things to the appetite that are not good, so I think I sympathize.

There's a butternut squash ration? Who knew?

Cheer up, honey. It's our Post-Victory funk. Without Chimpy F***nuts to scream about, I'm sort of lost and annoyed these days.

Here - this one never fails to break me up:

[AlecBGreen]

5. oh i love borscht

i went on a ukrainian cruise ship and they served the most delicious borscht at every meal (vodka too) and ive never found a recipe that I like as much as the first. how do you make yours?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

7. Easy

A stiff beef stock - not chicken - to start.

Heat it to simmering, throw in a few quartered onions, a couple of diced carrots, a couple of peeled, cubed potatoes, a pound of beets sliced into matchsticks (I use canned, just like my mother did), the juice from the beets, and let that all simmer for twenty to thirty minutes.

Then, add a good splash or two of lemon juice, a couple good hits of kosher salt (it's what I use for cooking), some dill, dried or fresh, and some pepper. Stir it all up, and, if you like (it's not my preference, but my mother did it, and it was pretty good), you can add a cup or two of chopped green cabbage.

Let it all simmer for another fifteen or twenty minutes.

In each bowl, stir in a nice dollop of sour cream, and top that with chopped green onions, white and green parts.

It's so easy, it's shameful. And I've fixed this with fresh beets, which just turned out to be a royal mess, and the taste was not significantly different enough for me to foresake Mom's canned beets.

Enjoy!

[AlecBGreen]

10. tomorrow is sposed to be cold here

so im gonna make that up and serve it with some nice pumpernickel & a few pints of guinness. thanks for the recipe!

[The empressof all]

8. I NEED to hear about the Ukrainian Cruise ship

My family is Ukrainian and I always crave good basic Ukrainian food like Pirogies and Kuemkies. Did you cruise out of Odessa ...Where did you go...What did you eat....

Spill... I didn't know of such things and now I want to plan a vacation.

[AlecBGreen]

11. lol

i wish we sailed out of Odessa. Actually it was a cruise down to guatemala and mexico. They ship was ukranian (the M/V Gruziya) and it was a converted car carrier. It was sooo tiny! I wish I had the pics to show you. When we pulled into port next to a Carnival cruise ship their guests couldve spit down our smokestacks from their balconies! It WAS a real fun cruise tho and I enjoyed it way more than the Carnies did Im sure. We had good Ukrainian food, live music and shows, lots of drinks, and all the female crewmembers were big-boned, blond haired beauties! It was great!

We had a Ukrainian exchange student when I was younger from Lviv. Id love to go over there and see the country. It sounds wonderful.

[The empressof all]

12. Was it mostly Russian tourists on the cruise

How did you ever find such a thing? I just did a quick search but now I'm intrigued.

[AlecBGreen]

13. it was almost 20 years ago (!)

man im feeling old...

from what I remember it was all Gringos like myself, mainly older retirees. I think we were the only "family" on the whole cruise. Ill talk to my dad about it tomorrow. If you search the M/V Gruziya, it might still be active.

Cool story. 2 years before we took the cruise, we were in Quebec. Years later (after both vacations had come and gone) we were looking at old photos. There, in one of our Quebec photos, was the Gruziya, floating in a Montreal dock. We ran into this tiny little converted Ukrainian car ferry/cruise ship not once but twice within a few year. Crazy.

[The empressof all]

14. Looks like Jeff Foxworthy bought it...

Guess he needed the work...

There go my dreams of cruising the Black Sea stuffed like a little plump perogie and digustingly drunk on Vodka....

[The empressof all]

6. I lost my thyroid about 30 years ago

Even with the supplementation its a struggle to not have everything I eat go directly to my hips. It's gotten worse after 50 and now that I'm waiting for my hip replacement and can't move around I have to be even more hyper-vigilant about what I can eat. If I could get around without major hassles, I'd run away to NY for a week or two and slobber down White Castles just to get me out of the fricken funk. So I can't maneuver around much right now in the kitchen to do what I love most and even if I could I couldn't make the things I'd most want to eat.

Alas Butternut Squash is a carb for me and I only permit myself about a half a cup with dinner. It's still wonderful cubed up and sprayed with Olive Oil and lots of "lite" salt.

I know this funk will pass...I'm gonna get my hair cut this weekend and maybe get a mani/pedi. At my next 20lb loss I'm going here--http://www.olympusspa.net/ I hear their scrubs are life changing....But I just want to sneak in some Bulgolgi

[Tangerine LaBamba]

9. Oh, baby............

Yeah, that would bum me out, too. I have a few friends on Synthroid, and just when they think they have the dosage nailed, things change, and they're weirded out again. My heart goes out to you.

As for the hip replacement, I was in an accident that left me with a broken femur - the head of the longest damn bone in the body broke off right in the socket - so I thought "hip replacement," which is - I've done the research and I have lots of physician pals - a really slick procedure these days.

But, nooooooooooooo. Not with my luck. I ended up having this epic surgery that turned my femur into part titanium and glue and bone grafts and, man, you cannot believe how complicated rebuilding part of the human body can be.

I was in bed for three months before I was even allowed to put a tiny bit of weight on the leg.

Now, I'm perfect. Well, perfect like I was before all this.

But, I'm telling you this because I watched people who'd had hip replacement surgery - including an 80-year-old pal who's still a practicing dermatologist who always makes the lists of the Best Doctors In The DC Area - spend two or three days in the hospital, a couple or three days in rehab, and then they were home, walking with a cane.

Absolute amazing how this procedure has become so streamlined.

You'll lose weight during your recovery, too, trust me - the painkillers, which are really nice(!), set you up so that you don't really notice that you're not hungry.

A haircut always helps everything, as does the mani/pedi. Buy a wonderful book and lose yourself. That always works for me, but I'm notoriously easy.

Your spa place looks perfect. I'm a sucker for those things. This - http://www.tenthousandwaves.com/ - was always my favorite when the world was too much with me.

Did it ever occur to you that food is really the most central thing in your life? Every once in a while I think that's true for me. I wonder.

In any event, thank you for explaining your situation to me. I hope my tale helps you to know that you're in for a life-changing experience, and it'll be really all right.

:toast: