Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Neatballs, Buns, and Rachel

Rachel and Peter stopped by as I was fixing dinner.  They and their boys are dear friends to our family - and they are moving far away this summer.  I'm sad about it, it's true, even though I can be happy for them in a little part of my selfish heart.


But I appeared to be a kitchen goddess when they dropped in - had an oven full of vegetarian neatballs, baked potatoes, and hamburger buns.  I've decided that I'm bypassing the choice of grocery store sales or nasty cheap buns by making buns myself, so I took advantage of a cool-ish day and an oven supper to make the buns.

I asked my husband to take a picture of Rachel and me; he told us to say "buns" which, we discovered, made us look very strange.


The neatballs, a new recipe to me, were fantastic.  I'm already planning other menus around them and thinking of people I want to share them with.  We ate them with baked potatoes and steamed broccoli.


My children are in love with baked-potato-skin cups, the way we ate baked potatoes when I was a child.  I scrub baking potatoes, poke them once, and bake them for an hour.


Then we cut the potatoes in half, hollow out the skin, and put the fluffy potato on the plate.  Put a pat of butter, salt and pepper in the little potato-skin cup and that is heaven!  Is there a name for this?


 Formerly, I oiled the potatoes and put them on a tray so their skins would be soft and I wouldn't be cooking in foil.  However, I shyly introduced this childhood method of my mother's and we are all hooked.
A serving dish from my late Grandma Weaver

7 comments:

  1. I LOVE anything with potatoes! I think I will be making these tonight for my family :) The meatballs sound amazing and I need your baking powers to transfer to my hands so I can successfully make rolls. I fail every time!

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  2. We're hooked on buttered potato skin "boats" (that's what Matt calls them)ourselves. So yummy. And to think when I was a little girl I refused to eat the skins! Little did I know....

    Homemade buns are so much the superior. I'm glad you braved heating up the kitchen. I am sure they're well worth it. They look superb.

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  3. beautiful buns! i'm so tired of grocery store buns too. so underwhelming. often i think they are not worth the calories.

    oh do i enjoy a good baked potato.

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  4. We just call them the potato skins - that's the way we eat them too. I love baked potatoes for that reason! I often make mine with meatloaf and peas or carrots.

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  5. So you put the potatoes directly into the oven without wrapping them in tin foil?

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  6. Anon, precisely. That gives the finished skins crackle and heft. The inside of the potato is the same as a regular baked potato.

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  7. Love that dish the potatoes are in. So pretty..
    Your children are adorable and love the one of your daughter eating the potatoe..So cute!!
    I too, cook potatoes like this..yummy.
    Those buns look so yummy ..just beautiful.. You are a fantastic cook.. I have tried breads, and honestly... not much sucess.[I think my husband prefers, I get them at the grocery store.. that tells you how bad my bread making is.lol]

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