Meatballs and Sweet Potato Fries

for dinner tonight- yum. I didn't end up making meatballs yesterday, I started feeling pretty bad again and decided (once again) not to bother cooking.

The meatballs were just as I posted yesterday, I ended up with 64 meatballs. If my calculations are correct, that means that 5 of them are Core + 1 pt- not too shabby! I served them with a side of spaghetti sauce for dipping.

As promised, here is a picture of my "meatball pan":



See the nice grooves? These are great for collecting the grease, but they make this thing a royal pain to clean. My mom has something similar to this that she's had forever, she only uses hers for meatballs and bacon in the microwave. Shortly after I got married, we were having company over for dinner and I was making spaghetti and meatballs. I realized I didn't have one of these pans, crossed my fingers and ran to Wal-Mart... thank goodness I found this!

I also did sweet potato fries, using suggestions found here and here. I ended up using 3 sweet potatoes, the kids munched while I cooked. Unfortunately, I overcooked a few fries:


Ready to go down the disposal


Still a little burnt on the bottoms (these did get eaten, though!)

After a little trial and error, I found what I liked, though I would have preferred them to be a bit crunchier (the slightly burnt ones were crunchy!). Someone on Roni's food blog suggested double-cooking them, I might try this next time.


The best batch, though a bit soft for my taste

Roni suggested using a big knife to cut the sweet potatoes. She wasn't kidding. I love this big knife, but don't use it very often... cutting these things definitely called for it!



She also suggested curry powder on sweet potato fries. I did try that, but was not impressed. I really preferred just the kosher salt. Please realize in the pictures that I didn't clean the pans in between uses, I just laid new raw sweet potatoes on top of where I'd already cooked some- so the pictures look like I used a lot of baking spray and salt. (I didn't use as much as it appears!)

Everyone was happy with dinner tonight. I was surprised that I ended up needing all 3 sweet potatoes. Had the kids and I not munched while stuff was cooking, one probably would have done the job, but at the end of the night, we only had a handful left over (so three was a good number). Will definitely make these again.