Meal Plan Disaster

Last month, I planned out all of our dinner meal for the entire month of February. Either I’m a genius, or completely crazy. I like to think it is a little combination of the two. One of my goals consisted of making something I had never made before at least once a week. No big deal right?

I really needed something like this to change out current list of things we eat ALL THE TIME. It was also good because I had to use new spices and new combinations to make dinner. Before this, I was beginning to think everything I made had the same flavor. (I didn’t really notice this until Husband noted that the chili and the spaghetti sauce tasted a lot alike. He was right.)

And so, this month, I have done well with the goal. The first week, I tried a Sweet Bacon Wrapped Pork Loin It was awesome. It got rave reviews from everyone (the extended family got to try it too.) and I was feeling inspired, encouraged, ready to take on anything.

Until last night’s recipe, Sweet and Sour Meatballs. The recipe was so simple. I printed it out last month and added chile sauce to the grocery list. Every time I went to the store, I checked for chile sauce. I couldn’t find it. Seriously, what’s the deal. So last night came around and I had no chile sauce, however, I did have some Frank’s Red Hot Sauce in the pantry from a couple of weeks ago. It was free with coupon. What’s the difference right? So I added the hot sauce (the whole thing) and the grape jelly to the crockpot. And so, I went on with my afternoon.

After a while, I needed to add the meatballs. When I took the lid off the crockpot, the smell was so strong, my eyes were burning. That was my first sign of problems, but I justified it to myself. “Husband likes spicy foods.” “Husband wanted new flavors and this is truly a new flavor.” I quickly threw the meatballs in and closed the lid.

Obviously, the kids and I were not going to be able to eat these meatballs, so I started making some for us. I used teriyaki sauce and a little soy sauce. How can you mess that up? Easy when the teriyaki sauce is actually a marinade and you added the whole thing into the pan and let it cook on a really high heat and burn not only the meatballs, but the sauce. Again, I tried to salvage the meal. I turned it down, cooked some rice and stir fry veggies. This would all work out.

The smell of the two sets of meatballs mixed together was nauseating. I just kept cooking in hopes that they would taste great separately. Husband got home, walked through the door and the look on his face said it all. He tried to hard not to look disgusted because he new tonight was a new recipe night. He even offered to taste both, just to check them out. I can’t believe I let him. It was horrible. He didn’t spit them out or throw them up, but it was close. His eyes were watering he kept drinking a lot of soda.

In the end, “New Recipe Night” completely backfired. The point of preplanning meals and all of this effort was to keep us from eating out as much. Last night, Carl’s Jr. was glad to see us.