Sausage and Meatballs; There is No Hidden Meaning

Pretty much all food is fattening, or it can be easily made fattening (think Rachel Ray and her pounds of CHEESE all over everything). I remember reading something somewhere, probably back in the 1990's, about how when the U.S. got into a "low-fat" food pushing mode in the 80's, in order to keep food palatable, fat was removed and replaced with sugars - probably high-fructose corn syrup, since it's the cheapest sweetener out there. By the 90's, the food industry wised up, and instead started using fat substitutes in food that the human body was not capable of digesting, such as Olestra ("warning: may cause anal leakage," thank you, Jesse).

I think that when I was growing up, I and my siblings probably had a lower-fat diet than a lot of our peers. By sheer dint of having a large number of children and grandchildren to cook for on a daily basis - there were 10 of us living at home by the time I was 8 - and a limited budget, Mom took pains to stretch the most important part of the meal, the meat. To this day, I cannot eat gawumpky (cabbage rolls) that other people make, because my mother used a much higher ratio of rice to beef than a typical recipe suggests. Mom also made the best meatballs, and she probably got 25-30 out of a pound of beef. I miss those meatballs; when we had spaghetti, I used to save the meatballs for "dessert."

A few months ago, my yahoo news page featured a video for making the "perfect" Italian meatballs, hosted by Fabio Viviani of the "Chow Ciao" feature. http://screen.yahoo.com/women/chow-ciao/ I eventually tried Fabio's method, because hell, he's cute, but I didn't like the results. It involved cooking the meatballs in sauce, with water added to the top. I just didn't care for the mushy texture; Mom's meatballs were browned first, which made them firm, and she probably drained the grease.

Mom used the broiler pan a LOT. I remember having to wash the dishes and clean that shit up. She made hamburgers with onions and bread crumbs and eggs, cooked on the broiler pan, and the grease dripped away from the burgers. She cooked her meatloaf on a broiler pan; I remember in later years, she lamented the availability of good ground beef, stating that when she used to make meatloaf (on the broiler pan) she could dip her finger in the runoff, and it tasted good, but these days, it was just gross grease.

Mom used to make Italian sausage, which I loved. She cooked it forever, for like an hour in a tomato sauce with onions, and then served it like hotdogs on these excellent hard rolls that didn't get too soft with the sauce. I remember her telling me a story about cooking for her brother-in-law Pete, for some reason, sausage with onions and peppers (no sauce) on a big grill, I suppose state-fair style.

Sausage is so damn fatty. However, since this past week I had such a disappointing experience with turkey breakfast sausage, I decided to let sausage redeem itself as delicious in my eyes/in my stomach. Plus, Italian sausage was on sale for $2.49.

I've always been a dumbass about freezing meat, but I'm getting better. I wrapped up 3 of the 5 links and put them in the freezer. The other 2 I cooked today. I used a small saucepan, filled it about 2/3 with water, added the sausage, and cranked up the heat to get it started. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying close attention and the water came to a boil. Let me tell you, it was gross. A thick layer of foamy fat formed on top of the water. I removed it from the heat, skimmed off the fat - it was so weird - and put the pan back on the burner at a medium-low heat. I let it simmer for about 45 minutes, then drained the water, which had an orangey tint which means I probably lost significant spices, but the water was greasy-looking, so I probably dumped out some more fat. I poured about a third of a jar of Newman's Own spag sauce on it, and heated that for about 15 minutes while I boiled some thin spaghetti.

I have to say, it was pretty damn good. I know it wasn't low-fat, but with a significantly smaller portion of pasta than what I might normally eat, one sausage and the spaghetti was pretty filling, especially since I'm still having bread issues so I didn't have any bread with it. I will have the leftovers tomorrow. It's probably still just as healthy as a microwave meal, and I'm sure it's much healthier than fast food. My sister could make this even healthier with her homemade pasta sauce made with fresh tomatoes.