Happy Cinco De Mayo

Hope you have a happy (and safe) Cinco De Mayo. Here is a sweet and fun margarita for your celebration.

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
3 1/2 cups seeded, cubed watermelon
3/4 cup tequila
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
Crushed ice

Make a simple syrup by bringing sugar and water to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves; boil for a minute, turn off heat and coo.

Put watermelon in blender and puree until smooth. In a cocktail shaker combine all ingredients and shake well. Serve over ice in sugar rimmed glasses.

The First Tomato

Here it is, the moment we have been waiting for...the first tomato. Many more to follow but I was so excited to see the first one get all red. I may have 'premature picked' in my excitement but it sort of fell off of the vine when I was checking it. We'll eat it tonight.

Mine are better than Ikea's!

Okay, y'all know m obsession with Ikea Swedish Meatballs. But I'm running out of my frozen stash and so I had to some up with a substitute, or drive four hundred miles to pick more up. So I looked up recipes on the Internet and found one from Ikea's cookbook. But the only problem was that the directions were European, in things like grams, deciliters, etc. I failed metric system and I'm an American, dammit, we won't change. So I had to adapt the recipe a bit. And then we ate them side by side with one of the few Ikea meatballs we had left. And guess what? My mom liked mine better! And I tasted them and I liked mine better too! I still need to work on the cream sauce but at least I have half of the equation down!

Better Than Ikea Swedish Meatballs

1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground pork
1 egg
1/4 c. half and half
1/4 c. flour
3 Tbsp. minced onion
2 small potatoes, cooked and cooled (you can boil but I just microwaved them)
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
5 Tbsp. butter

Saute onions in a bit of butter until tender and lightly browned. Cool. Peel and mash potatoes until smooth. Mix all of the ingredients together until it reaches a smooth consistency. Shape into small balls and fry slowly in remaining butter (I cooked the over medium low heat for about 45 minutes total.) Serve with cream sauce (I'll let you know how to make that once I perfect it!) I love them with big egg noodles, yum.