Ladies and Gentlemen, the Amazing Spaghetti Bomb!

So as previously promised, part 2 of this morning's blog

When I last left you, I was given an odd and almost impossible request from Joey D. When asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner, a mischievous grin crossed his face. Then his hands went up. When he answers a question with a description involving hand gestures, you know its going to be interesting and most likely ridiculous!  The next words out of his mouth were "Can you make a giant meatball filled with spaghetti?" He stumped me. This doesnt happen often. I thought for a minute and said "Uh... sure? Im sure its possible." So I spent the remainder of the day finding ways to make this happen. Of course, its the ONLY time that when researched on the interwebs, I found nothing!! I found a meat bowl but nothing even close to this.

In the meantime I started on the banana Boston cream pie. It was pretty simple. It helps to have a shiny red race car KitchenAid mixer. Its a Professional 5 Plus. This means it weighs more than Sadie and sounds like an outboard motor. Since I have no counter space, I have to keep it on a shelf and lug it to the table every time I use it. Its totally worth it, though. I get quite a workout. I am starting to see some real Popeye forearm muscle (pronounced mus-kle) def-kinition. Im becoming quite the badass!

So I made the pastry cream and then the cake. I love making cakes from scratch. Mainly because they require baking powder. Dont know why but I like baking powder. Maybe its because it is so close to home. No matter where in the world I go, I will always find a little piece of the Haute. See:

The cake went very well. Even though my mixer was too big to beat the two egg whites so I had to beat them to soft peaks by hand. I felt like my arm would fall off.

I did have an assistant but to be honest, she wasnt much help. Good help is hard to come by. My assistant spent a lot of time sitting around watching me, sampling the product, pointing fingers, and although I feel she may be unqualified to do so, barking orders and telling me what to do:

 

Much like my cousin, Lindsay's adorable assistant, mine also has an issue with drinking on the job.

In spite of the tremendous pressure and lack of help from my little munchkin helper, the cake turned out to be WONDERFUL. More on that later but now back to the meaty dilemma at hand:

I realized that to make a whole meat sphere would be next to impossible, both gravitationally speaking and in terms of quality. It would make the spaghetti all gross and greasy. So after long deliberation, I decided a spaghetti bomb would be the way to go. It all started with the meat bowl. So I went about the business of making the meatball mixture that I would typically use. It included a ground beef, pork, and veal mixture. I sauteed onions and mixed garlic in olive oil. Then added some red wine and worcestershire sauce. While I was cooking this delicious mixture Joe came into the kitchen and said "mmm... that smells awesome! What is it?" I was reluctant to answer because I knew it would gross him out. But I told him and his face twisted. So then I had a brilliant idea. I got out the baby food grinder and pureed the delicious onion and garlic mixture. This is what it looked like:

Soooo tasty! Smelled amazing and as it turns out, was a great binding agent. Next we added seasoning and bread crumbs... LOTS of breadcrumbs, some eggs, some milk, bada boom bada bing, we have a meaty concoction that was sure to be delicious. Since I HATE mixing meat with my hands and they are all cracked and painful from cleaning and washing my hands a bazillion times a day, Mr. Birthday Boy, himself, pitched in. He gets some sort of strange satisfaction out of mixing meat by hand. Perhaps something that should be examined in therapy or personal reflection, but who am I to make that call?

Then I had a crazy notion to smoosh the meat mixture up the sides of a stainless steel mixing bowl and bake. This was actually quite an icky feeling and looking situation! Thanks to Jersey Shore, I am now alarmingly aware of the fact that I used the words "smoosh" and "situation" in this paragraph. 

Baked it for a while... I had no frame of reference so I crossed my fingers, set the oven to 375 and eyeballed it. I did put another nesting bowl in the middle and weighted it so there wouldnt be any shrinkage and thickening. Lord knows shrinkage is never good. So when it was done this is what we got:

Hard to see the difference but it is cooked... It actually looked like a school cafeteria hamburger, only in the shape of a bowl. So I drained the juice, splashed in a layer of spaghetti sauce and stuffed it with this delicious spaghetti, ricotta, mozzarella, sauce mixture which I did not photograph because by this time, I was starting to get nervous and felt a little under the gun. But know that this was an interesting sight. I put it back into the oven for a while. After a while... I cant give you specific times because I dont remember... I took it out and CAREFULLY flipped it upside down onto a foil lined pizza pan. It was the only thing I could think of that would accommodate this monster without leaking out all of the juices that seemed to be pouring out at an alarming rate.

Then I took this beast out, gave it a sprinkling of cheese and called the troops in to test this monster:

It didnt look pretty but considering the fact that it was the maiden voyage, I think we did pretty well! No breaking. Some light spillage out of the bottom and some sloppy sauce application but all in all it was successful. It was cooked through, it smelled delicious. It was time to cut it:

Looks terrifying, doesnt it? 

And now the plating test:

We used the fine china ;-) The pattern is called Dixie. It was passed down to me by my mother. LOL! Actually, the use of paper plates, although not the best selection for spaghetti, was per Maddy's request. This culinary adventure made a lot of dishes for her to wash. I figured I would oblige.

The taste test? It was unanimously a huge success! Everyone LOVED it! It was AWESOME!! We all ate ourselves silly!

Then came the singing of Happy Birthday and CAKE!
I tried to take what I thought was the easy route and use a tube of Betty Crocker decorating icing... I almost had an aneurysm trying to squeeze that stuff out. So it may look like an ape wrote on the cake, at least I used proper punctuation. *score one for me! And of course, Joey shouted the obligatory "I WANT MY NAME!"

In our house, the birthday boy/girl has to wear two hats. Joey D is no different! I thought it looked smashing on him. (Although, Maddy did call him out for looking like "Tit Head" from Little Nicky sooooo... thanks for making me feel like a bad mom for letting you watch a highly inappropriate movie and then associating a completely innocent fashion statement with a demon who happens to have a bra-clad pair of knockers on his head. AWESOME!)

So boys and girls, there you have it... the story of the spaghetti bomb aka meatcano. Thank you for going on this journey with me. I appreciate you hanging in there. I know it got a little hairy there in the middle. And I also appreciate that you still read on even though Im obviously not into the whole brevity thing! So I leave you with this though... If you will it, Dude, it is no dream! Happy birthday Mr. Joey D!!

Check out my hooters!

So, I now have a blog. Exciting stuff! What are your thoughts on the background and banner? Yes, I hate birds but I like these owls. They have personality. I am very much a fan of things with lots of personality. Speaking of which: my cousin Lindsay (who has become my new BFF and about whom I plan to blog soon) is an awesome blogger and inspired me to start my own. I used to blog a lot back in the day of MySpace. I had quite a following too. Then I got irritated by MySpace and went to Facebook and havent blogged since. This is a shame because I was damn good at it. I feel as though I have lost my mojo. It may take a few blogs to get it back. So please dont judge me based on this blog post. Dont let it deter you from coming back to visit. Its like going into someones house and they have a bra tucked into the couch cushion and a sink full of smelly dishes. They missed trash day, their kids are running around like monsters, the dog is barking and humping your leg, it smells like some sort of strange chemical... you just feel weird about going back. Lets not make this like that!

So as many of you know, Im a mom. A mom of FOUR children. 
My two oldest are Madeline and Dylan. Pinky and the Brain. Except they are both genius and both insane!

Then there is Sadie (she was Joes... now she is ours!) She fits in quite well... she ain't right in the head!

And finally, last but not least... (and she will be the first to let you know it!) Annabelle

I kind of like the job. I have fun with it from time to time. Other times I want to move to another country and change my name. I deal with this by barking "MY NAME ISNT MOM ANYMORE! I CHANGED IT! AND IM NOT TELLING YOU WHAT IT IS!" Then my children, if they are feeling particularly saucy, will start trying to guess my new name. Its hard to stay mad when I have children calling me Debbie, Lizzie, Reggie, Steve, Rumpelstiltskin, and Couch Cushion. They are little punks like that. But I digress.

As a mom, I feel its my responsibility to carry the torch of the many moms who came before me, including my mother and her mother, and do silly, ridiculous stuff to make my family happy. I will blogging about those things, mostly. Todays blog is about one such thing. Except it wasnt done for my children. It was done for my  Joey D. 


Tuesday is his 31st birthday. Last year for his birthday dinner I made Swedish meatballs (his favorite!)and a Boston cream pie that looked like a record.

Pretty cool, right? He was psyched but really disappointed inside because he was hoping for a party. A surprise party. I had planned a surprise party and he found out about it. I had to stage an elaborate argument in which I told him that there would be no party and the plan was off... this was not easy because he was crushed. So the kids and I spent ALL DAY making this dinner and this cake. I made Boston cream pie from scratch. Joe did end up getting his surprise party after all. I just had to plan it in March. Lizzie came to visit so I sent Joe to the airport to pick her up, the guests arrived, he walked in the house and everyone yelled surprise and it was awesome. This year he had no surprise party but he did get an awesome birthday dinner.


I always ask him if he has any ideas for dinner. His response is always. "I dont know!" Dylan makes crazy dinner requests all the time and I feel that I must oblige because he actually asked. Joes response is always "why does he always get what he wants for dinner?" To which I always reply "Because he asked". And its always something odd that you wouldnt expect to be requested by a 7 year old. He is a brave explorer when in comes to food. Joe, not so much. So I was SHOCKED when he told me what he wanted for his birthday dinner. Maddy and I figured he would give me the "I dont know" again so we already planned to make swedish meatballs and boston cream pie.  Then Dylan suggested banana cream pie. Thats another one of Joeys faves. I was torn. Maddy and I both had a simultaneous light bulb moment and rushed into the kitchen and blurted, at the same time, BANANA BOSTON CREAM PIE! So desert was set! But dinner... oh dinner. I asked Joey what he wanted for his birthday dinner and was blown away by his response. He did not answer with "I dont know"... no! He answered with something completely unexpected. BUT - Im not going to tell you about it in this blog. Im making you wait. To Be Continued... (it ensures that you will come back again to find out what he decided to ask for.)  I also feel that this post is really long and you are probably tired of reading by now.
If you are saying to yourself "Why the hell would this be interesting enough to come back?" Just know that I wouldn't blog about it if it weren't EPIC! And nothing boring ever happens in our house. I will have part 2 for you this afternoon!