Home Made Spaghetti Sauce and Meatballs

Two weeks ago I was planning to visit my grandparents house in CT for the weekend. Unfortunately the snowstorm "Nemo" came into town. While NYC only got about 8 inches of snow, my grandparents apparently received about 38 inches!

On that Friday afternoon when I was supposed to be having a nice vacation day in CT, I instead left work a few hours early to beat the storm. I then made some home made spaghetti sauce and meatballs to cheer myself up a bit. This is a perfect meal to eat while surviving a snow storm.

This is a recipe from my mother and one of our families favorite meals. Be thankful I'm sharing it with you!

Sauce

2-3 35oz cans of Crushed Tomatos
3-4 tablespoons oregano
2 tablespoons basil
some salt and pepper
2 cloves of garlic

Put all of these ingredients in a large pot together and simmer.

Meatballs

1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground pork (I could only get .68 lbs ground pork- but it's fine)
1/2 cup-ish seasoned italian breadcrumbs
1/4 cup-ish parmesan cheese (cheap stuff like kraft works best)
1 egg

Mash this all up together with your hands. Then form the meat into tightly packed 1.25 inch balls. Make sure they are tightly put together so they don't fall apart in the pan.

Fry the meatballs in about 4 tablespoons of olive oil on medium heat until they are browned- this takes a while. Watch out for burning oil splatters! When they are finished, place them into the sauce and let them simmer for 3 hours, stirring occasionally. While the meatballs should be mostly cooked through by the time you're done frying, you'll know that they are completely cooked after the additional 3 hours in the sauce pot.

Serve with some pasta and you are good to go.

The best thing about this recipe is that you can freeze all the leftover sauce and defrost it again in a few weeks or months for another delicious night of home made sauce and meatballs. 

Let's hope the snow comes during the week next time so it doesn't ruin any weekend plans!

Thanks for reading, 

Reverse French Manicure

This weekend I decided to be a bit more creative with my nails and attempt a reverse french manicure. I had two different images as inspiration in my head as I did this. First was this really beautiful manicure I saw on Instagram, the other was this "Nail Art for Chipped Tips" blog post I read on Glitter, she wrote.

I used one coat of Sally Hansen 'Petal Pusher' as the regular french base and one coat of OPI 'French Quarter for Your Thoughts' as the tip. Like the blog post above suggested, I used paper reinforcers on the nail to make a perfect circular tip. Best suggestion- paint each tip one at a time, removing each reinforcer before the nail dries. I was always curious what worked better, leaving tape on until dry or removing it immediately. Apparently removing it immediately is the best option.

I'm really happy with how this turned out. Something I like about the reinforcers is the adhesive is not as strong as basic scotch tap, so when you remove them it's easier on the bottom layer of nail polish. I think I'll be using them more often in the future!

Have you attempted a reverse french manicure? Have any tips or tricks for a finer finish in the future? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading,