Weekend to do list: make meatballs, zone out on Insta Stories, read a great book
My book comes out NEXT WEEK OMG. You can preorder it from your favorite local independent bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Kobo, Google Play, Indiebound, and Amazon UK! Or if you want a signed copy, you can contact East Bay Booksellers or The Ripped Bodice and order from them and I'll sign it for you! And as I was writing this, it popped up on EW's Must List for this week and I'm freaking out!!! Earlier this week, I had an interview for the book where someone asked me my favorite way of wasting time on the internet. I said it was a tie between scrolling through Twitter or scrolling through Instagram, but as soon as I got off the phone, I realized that wasn't true. My absolute favorite way of wasting time on the internet is Instagram Stories by a wide margin. I love getting home from a long day, sitting down, and opening my phone to Instagram, and watching Stories from celebrities and friends and strangers alike for 20 minutes before I do anything productive. My favorite three celebrities to watch on Instagram Stories are Busy Philipps, Retta, and Ava DuVernay. They're very different but equally entertaining on Instagram. Busy takes us around her daily life in Los Angeles and elsewhere, her children are entertaining, and her chats to us about Friends and writing her book and life as a working actor in Hollywood are addictive. As a friend who is also obsessed with Busy's Stories said to me recently, "I even watch her exercise!" (I do too). Retta takes us on her journey of making coffee every morning, filming a new TV show, and chats about whatever she's watching on TV. And Ava gives us a ton of behind the scenes glimpses into her latest projects and introduces us to all of the people working on them (I am SO AMPED for A Wrinkle in Time, I can't even tell you). I have many other favorites (I adore stylists and makeup artists on Instagram a bunch, especially Joanna Simkin and Law Roach) but I also want to know your favorites on Insta Stories!
I've been spending a lot of time with my family for these past few weeks, and between that and a good friend on Twitter currently reading it, I've been thinking about The Turner House a lot. (So much so that I had a dream last night that someone told me they didn't like it and I was furious). It's about a big black family in Detroit, and how much they love each other and fight with each other and go to bat for each other in even amounts, and I felt the book deep in my bones. This December I was at a Hanukah party and the host was bragging about my book to her friends and one of them said "Oh my soon to be daughter in law also wrote a book!" I said, "What's it called?" and she said "The Turner House?" and I FLIPPED OUT. I love this book so much, and I hope you all will too.
Last weekend, I was in the mood to make something homey and comforting, and my first thought was a roast chicken. But the thing is: whenever I make a roast chicken for myself, as much as I enjoy making it, I'm sick of it by Wednesday. So then I thought about meatballs, and that sounded like the perfect thing to make a on a January night. I looked up a few of my favorite meatball recipes, and then riffed on all of them, and this is what I came up with. My very unbiased mother said they were "the best meatballs ever!!!!" so I hope you all like them too. (To loop this back to the first topic, I posted a little of my cooking of these on Instagram stories, I love to watch people cook in stories too)
Meatballs
This recipe made about 30 small meatballs
half pound ground beef
half pound ground pork
1 egg
1/2 cup whole milk ricotta
1/4 to a 1/2 cup grated parmesean
1/4 cup breadcrumbs (I used panko because that's what I had, any breadcrumbs will do)
3 cloves garlic, pressed
2 shallots, pressed (I cut the shallots into chunks and then smashed them through my garlic press)
about half a bunch parsley
Salt
Red pepper flakes
Flour for rolling the meatballs in after forming them
Toss everything except for the flour into a big bowl, and mix gently with your hands. You want it all to be well combined, but not packed tightly. Yes, you can mix with a fork if you're squeamish, but push past that, just wash your hands well before and after! Dust a big cookie sheet (lined with foil or parchment if you want) with flour, and then roll the mixture into relatively even balls (I like them to be about the size of a golf ball or even a little smaller, but you can make these whatever size you want, just know that the cooking time will change) and place on the cookie sheet. When they're all done, dust with more flour and roll them around a little so they're more or less evenly coated, and stick the cookie sheet in the fridge for a few minutes to a few hours while you get other stuff ready. You can cook these in a simple homemade tomato sauce (I basically just sauteed more chopped shallots and garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil, added some red wine when that was soft, and poured in a 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes and let it simmer and called it a day), a more complicated homemade sauce, or any simple tomato sauce from a jar. So whatever sauce you're going to use, get it simmering on the stove in a pan or pot big enough to hold the meatballs too. Then get another big frying pan hot (I put it on medium-high or so) and coated with olive oil, and fry the meatballs in batches for about two minutes per side, and drop them into the sauce when they're just golden on each side but not cooked through. Let the sauce and the meatballs keep simmering for about 10-15 more minutes, and done!
Have a great weekend!
Jasmine
P.S. My friend Amy Spalding and I are the two guest editors for Two Bossy Dames this week, so subscribe if you don't already! My section has a LOT of Harry and Meghan!!!
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