Foldover Cookies

I'm not a total fan of these, simply because i'm not a huge fan of shortbready cookies or cookies i haven't been eating every Christmas for the past 28 years. They're good though, and definitely taste great with my homemade peach/habanero jam! I had to sub 1/4 cup olive oil for part of the butter and they were super hard to roll out of fold without busting and cracking.

Recipe from Good Housekeeping? (emailed from my Mama)

• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 cup butter or margarine
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 tblspns sugar
• preserves
• 1 egg beaten w/tblsp of milk
• finely chopped nuts

1. Put flour in bowl, make a hole
2. thinly slice butter, put with egg yolks and sugar in hole
3. work with fingers until creamy
4. gradually blend in flour
5. sprinkle with 2 tblsp cold water, make a ball and flatten
6. wrap and chill well
7. heat oven to 325
8. cut dough in half, leave half in fridge
9. roll on floured surface to 1/8 inch, cut in 2 1/2 " rounds
10. repeat with other half
11. place rounds on sheet, put 1/2 tsp jelly, fold in half and pinch edges
12. brush tops with egg and sprinkle with nuts
13. bake 18 - 20 minutes till golden brown

makes 5 dozen. No.Way. Mine made about 2 dozen. Clearly i wasn't rolling thinly enough.

Pretty though, ay? My dinner guests were pleased i'd made dessert for once.

And nevermind about these not being tasty enough for me to eat them.... I've been eating at least 3 a night. (Why oh why am i dabbling in baking bread during cookie baking season? My waistline can compete with fresh bread OR cookies, not both in the same day!)

Brunch Recipes #1: Muffins and Applesauce

I was born in Connecticut. I then lived in Oregon for most of my life. Both of these locations provided me with seasonal bounties of apples in the Autumn. I am still accostomed to this and bought about 30 dollars worth of apples last fall due to the lack of bounty here in the southland. Not this year - i found some sense. Luckily this year also found me IN the northeast to enjoy the proper apple bounty in its very best location and season. My cousin was kind enough to bring a bushel of Maccoun (i always misspell that) apples to Montauk for me to turn into a delicious sauce.

Had i continued cooking the apples down, i'd have made a finer and denser apple 'butter' but i had socializing, beach walking, and stone collecting to do, so i settled for a simple sauce. Making applesauce is the easiest thing to do - so if you have a kiddo, or just really like applesauce (who doesn't?) make it yourself. Especially if you live in apple country, there is NO excuse to purchase pre made sauce, filled with preservatives, sugar, or just questionably sourced apples. Make your own!

It's easy:
Take a bushel of apples. Peel and core. You could even leave the peels on. I peel, but don't mind little stragglers of skin. Compost the peels and cores - keep the cores away from your doggies as apple seeds are poisonous.
Plop the apples chunked into a big pot along with a pinch of freshly ground cinnamon and cloves, cover and bring to a boil on high. Stir occasionally and keep heat at a medium/high until the apples start to fall apart into mush. Stir some more, maybe add a tiny pinch of brown sugar if you must - tiny pinch only! Keep covered and simmer on low for a few hours.

I think i simmered mine for about 4 hours or so. Nothing smells better than a simmering pot of apple goodness and it does all the work for you.

Now for the muffins. These were delicious and one particular muffin was taken hostage by my grandmother as her 'security muffin' (this story is too fantastic not to mention but too silly to type out fully here). Needless to say, Grandma Viv really liked her muffin and had THREE with her brunch. I think i had at least 2 and a half. These muffins aren't too sweet, they're wholesome without being dense, they complimented the applesauce well and would be great with breakfast or dinner.
I got the recipe from the Harried Homemaker and changed only the flour and the sugar - i used half whole wheat half all purpose flours, and half Rapadura and half granulated sugars. I doubled the recipe to make a little over 24 muffins and calculated the recipe to make about 145 calorie muffins.
These are not your gooey, sticky, sugary, fluffy, cupcakey blueberry muffins. They're biscuity while still being very muffiny and just darned scrumptious! I'll be making these regularly and with whatever berry is in season. Perhaps some cranberry muffins will be coming with me to Thanksgiving this year instead of the pumpkin bread pudding i'd planned.

• 1/4 C melted butter
• 2 cup flour - half all purpose, half white whole wheat
• 1/3 cup sugar - half rapadura, half granulated
• 1 T baking powder
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 egg beaten
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup berries  - i used frozen blueberries

Combine dry, make a well and add mixed up wet ingredients and blend within 25-20 strokes. Fold in berries last and cook in greased muffin tins at 425 for about 15-20 minutes. Mine went about 17 and i switched top to bottom, bottom to top half way through: thus burning my hand. First thing in the morning. Shesh.

A note on the prep: i mixed the dry ingredients here in Austin and packed them all up in an empty flour bag. TSA didn't mind my travelling with cucumbers, tomatoes, muffin mix, or cheddar cheese - though they were curious of my bag of rocks on the return voyage. Prepping the mix in my own bowls with my own measuring cups brought me sanity and mixing in the wet stuff in Montauk was a cinch. I baked these guys fresh for the table the morning of the brunch and all were scarfed down by cousin and uncle alike.

Cousin James and Grandma Viv ready to pounce on the feast.

 Yum. I want to eat more muffin and applesauce right now. NOW. Dangit, Austin and no apples. Next fall, maybe i will get the sweet taste of apple in my mouth again. For now, i anxiously await my friend's persimmon tree to ripen and be turned into jam by me.

Back tomorrow with the rest of the menu.

This post seen at Simple Lives Thursday

Homemade Dog Biscuits - Simple Living Thursday

***** Please note the updates on Dog Nutrition in this POST. Whole wheat may not be the best flour to be using when feeding our pups - many are allergic to it. Please avoid using Wheat, Corn, Soy, Sugar, Dyes, and Non-organic Eggs *****

We love our puppy and we want to feed her as wholesomely as we feed ourselves. I've been baking up this recipe for my dogs since i was in the 6th grade back in Merrill, OR. One of the teachers at my elementary school would fly up to Alaska (or Canada or wherever it takes place) to race in the Iditarod each year, and she gave us all this recipe during some pep assembly. I tweaked it up a bit to suit my puppy's needs, and if she could speak i think she'd recommend them to her friends. You can roll them out thin or thick - thinner makes them easier to break apart for training, thicker makes them harder to chew - so depending on if you're using them as training tidbits or pre lunch snacks, roll accordingly.
These treats are edible for humans too, depending what you add to them. I used to snack on them when i was a kid ;)

Ingredients

• 3/4 Cup hot water or Meat Juice*
• 1/3 Cup Spectrum natural vegetable shortening or other natural shortening or butter (i used less to make these lower cal, and subbed in a little peanut butter for flavor)
• 1/2 C powdered milk, i used goat
• 1/2 tsp salt *optional
• 1 egg beaten
• 3 cups whole wheat flour
• I subbed in a little bit of diatomaceous earth with the flour to help combat worms. Brewer's yeast would also be good to add - repels fleas and is good for the skin.

* For the meat juice i purchased some inexpensive soup stock beef bones and boiled them for many hours along with some beef liver. After the beef liver was boiled i cut it into tiny bits and sundried them in my car. That was not a pleasant car to get into the next morning, but Pocket approves of the treats. I have about a quart of meat juice leftover to use for more batches of dog treats.
More options are to add vegetables to the broth to increase the nutrients in the snacks. Try leafy greens, apples, squash, cucumbers, carrots, broccoli. 

1. Pour hot liquid over margarine and peanut butter
2. Stir in milk, salt, egg
3. Add flour 1/2 cup at a time, mixing well. This will be a very stiff dough.
4. Knead 3-4 minutes adding more flour if necessary.
5. Roll to 1/2 inch thick (see notes above)
6. Grease a baking sheet and place cookies with a bit of space between themselves. You can use cute cookie cutters, you can cut into pea sized squares or rectangles. I made rectangles that i break apart for training - i will try cutting them into tiny sizes before baking next time and see how that goes.
7. Bake for 15 minutes at 325
8. Allow to cool, remove from pan and store in a sealed jar. Makes 1 1/2 pound and seems to keep quite well.

Positive reinforcement training really works, as our little pup is proving daily. For heaven's sake don't use newspaper if your puppy has a potty accident (which was your fault, by the way!), give her treats every time she pees outside where you want her to, and use healthy treats as lures during difficult training excercises. Dog training is less about making your dog learn to be a human, and more about understanding and listening to your dog, talking to her, encouraging her when she is good (all times that she's not being bad) and ignoring when she IS naughty. It isn't difficult, but it does require consistency and patience.

 Practicing "Down" and "Leave it"

I feel good knowing where my pup's treats come from, and what's in them. I feed my chickens locally made organic non-gmo feed and organic veggie scraps from the garden. My turtle gets mystery pellets along with her bananas and grubs, but she's not overly picky. 

Two long dogs, laying down together. "Sleep" seems to be her most frequently practiced skill.

Do you eat organic food, slow food, local food? Do you feed your pets according to the same dietary goals and limitations as yourself?

I think that "stick" may be slightly too large to fetch, Pocket.

PS - Don't forget about my ONION GIVEAWAY! You still have until Monday to enter your comment for a chance to win a bunch of old fashioned multiplying onions! You get double the chance to win if you 'grab my badge' (in the right hand column) and post a link to your blog with said badge attached. Networking is fun!

Sour Pickle Recipe

Yum! I like pickles a lot! But i've found that the vinegar pickles i'm made in the past were just too vinegary and totally mush-fest.
I got the recipe for these pickles from Wild Fermentation, a super awesome book with a super helpful website, and author who will email you back with answers to your questions within hours! How cool is that?

Anyhoo - i gathered fresh produce from my garden:

• Small lemon cucumbers (a few a little too ripe and seedy, thus a little more mush factor than is generally considered ideal)
• Hot peppers
• dill
• Garlic

And procured some fresh grape leaves at The Natural Gardener. Add some seasonings i had on hand, some water and sea salt brine and voila: pickles! I struggled with the crock scenario - none of my receptacles seemed to have the right sized openings - but i performed my usual Miranda-scrimcoach and made it happen.

I used my large half gallon mason jar and stacked the grape leaves, garlic and peppers, seasonings and herbs followed by sliced cucumbers and topped with the brine (3 T sea salt per quart of distilled water). I then squished a pyrex lid into the narrow mouth of the mason jar and held it down with a vinegar bottle filled with water. Being Summer, fermentation happened pretty quick and turned over pickle results i was happy with in just one week. They're delicious and refreshing! And their flavor is much more multifaceted than plan old vinegar pickles. I repacked them into one quart container plus part of a pint and popped them in the fridge. They'll continue to ferment a tiny bit even in the fridge, but will stay pretty stable and keep quite a while.

There's tons of fermented brine leftover - i'll have to do SOMEthing with that.... i've heard you can drink it as a digestive tonic or use it as a soup stock. We'll see about that. Until then, we'll be enjoying our fresh pickles and relishing in summer's bounty (pun intended).

Recipe(let): Mexican Corn Salad

I make a salad such as this often, and with assorted seasonal ingredients. You could make it with black beans, green beans, peas, even lentils or barley or quinoa. The point is to create a complete protein by combining a legume with a grain: in this case Fava Beans and Corn. The favas were a bit tough as i'd left them on the bush for a while to let everyone mature enough to pick all at once - this might have been nicer with a quick blanch or just fresher favas. This also would have been great with jicama, but i had none on hand. This is a great salad by itself, or as i served it on top of salad for me and hot black beans for the husband. You can make a big batch of it and keep it in the fridge for quick lunches or snacks: it only gets better in time. Here's the recipe as it appears, followed by suggestions for ingredient alternatives of additions:

• Fava beans 
• Corn (about 1 part corn to 2 parts beans)
• Finely chopped spring onion: white and green parts
• Pinch diced cilantro to taste
• Minced garlic
• Dashes cumin, chilly powder, cayenne, salt & pepper
• Light drizzle olive oil
• Heavy drizzle lime juice: 1-2 Tablespoons or more to taste
• Splash raspberry balsamic vinegar

Alternatives/Additions:

• Exchange Fava Beans with Black beans, white beans, pinto beans, lentils, quinoa, or even orzo to change it to a pasta salad (no longer a complete protein)
• Red onions
• Diced fresh hot peppers: serrano, jalapeno, habanero, etc
• Diced fresh bell peppers
• Diced tomato
• Chives
• Jicama
• Change the spices from "Mexican" to "Indian" by adding curry, more cumin, cardamom and subbing mint for the cilantro

Voila. Quick and easy meal. I was actually not so hungry after doing an evening step aerobics class so there is leftover salad waiting for me for lunch today. Not too shabby!

What is your favorite use for fava beans? Do you prefer them fresh or cooked?

Pickled Eggs and a Kimchee State of Mind

Firstly, I must apologize for not posting these past few weekends. It has been project crunch time around the homestead: the hubby prepping and crafting his beautiful gourds, me working on decadent body product for my upcoming event. If you'll be in Austin this wednesday, come by and check it out. Some great jewelry by Schatzelein and bent on design, as well as $1 Lonestar beer at Thunderbird Coffee. I'd love to meet you.

Anyhoo, Sunday was a full day of farmers market patronage, cooking, and finishing up the last touches on my portion of the Mother's Day event. My kitchen tinkering included a first for me:  pickled eggs. Strange sounding, I know. Pickled eggs came to be when folks needed to travel with their protein and lacked sufficient storage to keep eggs fresh and unjostled. When pickled, the eggs can be kept for a few months unrefrigerated. I found a recipe on my local poultry meetup group and will experiment with it using only 4 or so eggs. No idea if i'll like them, so i'd rather not waste The Ladies' hard work.

Fresh eggs are hard to peel!

My other decision today relates to sustainability, seasonal eating, and my enjoyment of kimchee. I've posted my recipe here a few times, and still plan on trying the marinating method (versus the pound it to death method). But today i will only mention my new approach:

Kimchee is a condiment of versatility and self expression. You can use just about any vegetables and spices you like. I have decided that from this point forward, i will be preparing my kimchee with entirely seasonal produce. I stopped by the Hope Farmers Market today and purchase a locally grown cabbage (i tried to grow cabbage, but the snails beat me to the harvest) and then wandered my garden to pick some spring onions and garlic whips (which i dutifully followed by planting some basil seeds in their stead, it's about time!) Today's kimchee will be made with:

• Local cabbage
• Homegrown spring onions
• Homegrown garlic whips
• Homegrown carrots
• Homegrown dried chillies
• Homegrown coriander seeds
• Homegrown nasturtium leaves
• Homemade whey from local raw milk
• Salt - sourced from far away, i'm sure

Pickled eggs (very reduced recipe to serve 5 eggs):

• Malt and cider vinegar
• water
• 1 whole clove
• Small cinnamon stick
• 1/4 teaspoon or so of pickling spice
• Dash mustard
• Some hot peppers and cayenne powder
• 1/2 T rapadura
• pinch sugar
• 1/2 T pickling salt
• Garlic cloves

Bring to boil, simmer 15 minutes, cool and pour over the eggs. I know this is supposed to be non refrigerated, but it wierds me out, so into the fridge it goes.  I'll test them out next weekend and see what i think!

Great productive weekend for us, onward to a new week, and hopefully a successful (or at least informative) market event on Wednesday.

Oatmeal/Chocolate Cookies Recipe

Gosh, i have been remiss in the recipe department lately! That is mostly due to the nature of what i've been eating lately: the last of the garden lettuce/spinach/fava beans in big, delicious, balanced dinner salads every night. People look at my funny when i say i eat salad for dinner - as the main course. They clearly have not had one of my salads. They're as big as my head and leave me full and satisfied until morning and usually have a pretty decent amount of protein in the form of nuts, seeds, beans and corn, or fish/chicken.

Anyhoo - last night i whipped together some delicious tilapia and sweet potato oven fries, but as with most last minute dinners i just threw togehter things i knew would go together well and consumed heartily - no proportions noted in which to share with you to use. Most of my dinners are like this "miranda glops"  or  other one dish sort of meals that contain mysterious and wonderful things. I made the hubby's fish into two fish burgers, and mine was a delightfully steaming plate full of two fillets and caramelized onions. Yum! Sweet potato fries are so easy and quick to pull together too, and go great with lots of things.  The basics:

• Wash potatoes well
• cut in half, in half again, and slice into fairly evenly sliced 'fries' about 1/4 inch thick or less
• Spray baking sheet with nonstick
• Scatter the pieces of potato and spray with nonstick (you can also toss in a bowl with olive oil)
• Coat with seasonings: salt, pepper, chilly powder, cayenne, garlic, paprika whatever you want!
• Flip and repeat
• Stick in the oven at about 400 and bake until a good sizzle and squish when touched (about 20 minutes). Flip a few times during that time. I also increased the tempt to 425 for about 10 minutes to add a little more crisp

But today i'm going to try something i rarely if ever do: bake cookies. I have a new neighbor, and i like to welcome new neighbors. He's a young 20 something guy who works at a gym, i figure he can afford to eat a few cookies, and the husband would be happy to have cookies baked when he comes home, i'm sure.  I'll whip together something kind of healthy/naughty and see what happens. I'd like to throw coconut into this recipe, but some people don't like coconut (!) so i don't want to risk alienating the dude. I have an old recipe i used to bake known as "Real F***in' Good Cookies."  They are made with hazelnut flour, dark chocolate and golden raisons. They are to die for and they're almost vegan. I think i'll try and mix that recipe with oatmeal cookies and add some cocoa powder and see what happens! Here's what i came up with (TOTAL EXPERIMENT!):

• 1 cup oats
• 1 cup flour  all purpose/white whole wheat
• 1 cup ground almonds and pecans
• -1/4 cup rapadura + good squirt of agave nectar
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp salt
• cinnamon
• 1 Tablespoon cocoa powder
• dash vanilla
• 3 Tablespoons milk
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• Bake 350 11-12 minutes

Upon tasting the batter: not sweet or salty enough.
I added some coconut to the second batch which seemed to brighten the taste somewhat.
These could really use chopped dates, golden raisons, chocolate chips: SOMEthing. But i had none of those things, so they remain not quite sweet or salty enough. I added a pinch more sugar and agave and the cookies turned out dense little balls of something. Woudlnt' really call them cookies. Rather doughy. Miranda cookies i guess. I honestly thought the oil of the ground nuts would make them moister. I think they're pretty tasty though. I think if i did this again i'd double the cocoa powder, or better yet use melted bakers chocolate. That would help with the moisture as well.

All in all, not a bad outcome. They're doughy cookies, which is fine. Good for an after lunch sweet without too much whamo sugar. Might make awesome ice cream sandwiches if they were bigger... hmmmmmmmmmmmm ice cream saaaaandwiiiiiiiiiich.

Have a great weekend!

Easy Roasted Garlic Recipe

Well, my my. I had no idea i hadn't already posted this. I was about to make some mayo and wanted to make this batch with some roasted garlic in the blend. I searched my blog to find the temp and time, and low and behold i had not posted this after all.
Roasted garlic is super yummy, spreadable, and adaptable. Mix it with butter, mayo or cream cheese to spruce up those condiments. Slather it onto bread straight, or mix it into just about anything for a garlicy flavor that is less "sharp" than raw garlic. It's more mellow and not as spicy. Plus the olive oil you use to roast it becomes infused with a lovely garlic essence that's great to use in salad dressings or as dipping oil.

How to:
Simply cut the papery top (opposite of root side) with a sharp knife. You want to cut the top of each little clove in the bulb, just exposing the inner flesh without cutting off a ton of the meat - maybe a half inch at the most.
You can use muffin tins lined with foil, or just make little foil packets, or nestle several bulbs in an oven-safe dish and cover with foil. Place the bulb in the foil root side down, sprinkle with any seasonings you may like (salt, cayenne, basil, etc) and drizzle well with olive oil. It doesn't need to be submerged, but oil should get into all the crannies.

Roast for about 30 minutes at 450 degrees. At about 20 minutes in the delicious smell of garlic will be intense! Be careful when you open that packet - hot steam will come rushing out (along with some delicious garlic aromas). Allow garlic to cool some as you don't want to burn yourself on that hot oil, and easily squeeze the cloves out of their paper wrappers. Store in fridge whole, or squish out the cloves and discard the paper part (lick all that good oil off first).

Ta da, that's it. Don't burn your tongue, but eat at least one clove while it's still warm: soo devine.

What's your favorite way of using roasted garlic?

Now That's Some Spicy Kim Chee!

On Sunday I posted my process and recipe for delicious Kim Chee. It has been happily bubbling away on my counter for about 3 1/2 days now and it's ready. It was mostly ready last night, but i wanted to give it overnight just to be sure.

How can you tell it's done, you may ask? While it's fermenting, it smells nasty. If you open the lid that is. I was also having some problems with my seals - i'd replaced the old, rotten french seals on these 'made in France' jars, and the seal i replaced it with wasn't as wide as the original. Plus my recipe made a bit more than usual with that added half a purple cabbage so there wasn't enough room at the top - you really do have to leave that 1 inch of room! I kept waking up to liquid oozing out of the top. Not so pretty.
Anyhoo: solution= i removed some of the veg and put it in a separate little jelly jar. I also added another rubber seal to really seal that lid! Worked great.

Back to the when is it done issue: While it's fermenting it's quite okay to open the lid daily and press the veg down into the liquid (with clean hand or spoon!)(Some texts disagree with this and encourage you to keep it well sealed through the entire process to keep any oxygen out, i'll try that next time and report back if i notice a difference). You'll smell it - it will smell bad. You will wonder what the heck you're about to feed your family and why does it smell rotten. Never fear. In two - 5 or so days you'll open it and release a ton of pressure. Inside will be a zesty, softened mixture of veg that smells and tastes tangy, pickly, and spicy if you added hot peppers. Mine was still quite fizzy last night which is why i let it sit until morning. This morning the liquid was beginning to sink a bit and the veg definitely tasted like Kim Chee.

My recipe made 4 pints, in this case 3 pints for me and 2 jelly jars for friends. I added 2 jalapenos, habaneros and some dried cayenne and let me tell you

 it is spicy!

Serve kim chee with soup, as a condiment, in spring rolls, as a side dish, as a mid afternoon snack. 

Fermented foods, like kimchee,  aid in digestion and should be on your menu daily.
Fermenting foods is an ancient art - one of the first methods of preserving food that is often forgotten today. In the modern world so many things need to be mass produced and safe across a large range of variables and fermenting is best done in smaller batches. It is easy to do at home and perfectly safe if the correct precautions are taken: use fresh produce, clean jars and hands, and fresh (preferably raw if you can get it) whey.

Lacto-fermentation (in this case adding whey) preserves the food by inhibiting the bad bacterias with the lactic acid, and provides helpful enzymes and anticarcinogenic substances, promoting healthy flora in your digestive system. You may have seen the commercials for live yogurts being so great for your intestine and 'regularity'? The modern methods of pasteurization and high heat preparations have killed the lactobicilli in our foods - replace it by eating more fermented foods and get that body workin'!
This also goes for whole grains: there was a time when no one ate whole grains without first soaking, sprouting, or fermenting them - this was done to preserve the grains and to increase digestibility. The phytic acid on the bran of the grains inhibits the absorption of nutrients, minerals and vitamins that you're trying to get out of the whole grain. By soaking the grains first, you are essentially pre-digesting it and thus increasing the amount of goodness your body is capable of absorbing. So get rid of that 'puffed wheat' and 'bran flake' and soak yourself some steel cut oats for breakfast!

Have you fermented at home? what's your favorite recipe?
(i for one can't wait to make some pickles this summer!)

"Bison Balls"

Yes, this post title was aptly named by my husband. But hey, that's what they are!
I happened  to find some relatively inexpensive bison meat at the market the other day and planned to use the second to last baggy of stored homegrown tomatoes to make some spicy bison meatballs. We've been having a bit too much pasta lately, so i'm not sure what i'll serve them over, but i'm sure it will be delicious and hopefully have some leftover for sandwiches during the week.

• 1 pound bison meat
• 1/4 cup breadcrumbs with some ground up oatmeal mixed in
  
• 1/2 cup (or more) finely diced onion 
• 3 cloves finely diced garlic
• one egg scrambled
• hot chillies to taste (add lots!)
  
• salt and pepper
• mixed dried herbs: rosemary, basil, oregano, allspice
  
• drizzle truffle oil
• 2 splashes Worcestershire sauce
  

Mix up all ingredients but the meat and egg, add the meat and mix well with your hands. Make a little reservoir and scramble up the egg (this saves dirtying another bowl) then mix the egg into the meat mixture. Form into 1 1/2 inch balls and place on a pan with space between each.

Heat oven to 400 and bake about 15 minutes, turning once until browned. I found the balls to be quite soft, so take care while turning.

Meanwhile cook down yummy tomato sauce with plenty of hot peppers and garlic added. My frozen tomatoes already had onions and basil added, I added about 1/4 cup of mixed tomato paste from last night's pita pizzas, a good splash of red wine, some garlic, and lots more salt and pepper. If i do this again, I will be adding a lot more spice to both the balls and the sauce.  The tomato was cooked down with the skins still on, so after bringing to a simmer i blended the sauce up with the immersion blender to create a nice, thick, rich sauce - watch out for splatters!.
I still don't understand why people feel the need to add olive oil to tomato sauce.

When finished, add the meatballs to the sauce and allow to simmer for about 10 minutes or until your pasta or whatever else is ready. You could serve this on bread, on pasta, or as i ate it on potato. I would have preferred to serve it over a bed of sauteed kale, but my kale is lame this year. I served topped with some homemade mozzarella.

Notes:
This was delicious, don't get me wrong. I can't eat red meat, yet this was great and i did not get sick: god bless lean, antibiotic free bison! The sauce was delicious, it would have been better over pasta, but i'm trying to avoid pasta when i can (for dinner at least). The bison balls themselves were delicious, moist, firm, flavorful - i didn't notice the truffle flavor much, and they weren't nearly as spicy as i thought they'd be. Next time i will load up with a lot more spice. I also majorly missed having a green ingredient in my dinner. Not used to eating mostly meat and sauce. Tonight I will be eating nothing but green to make up for it, good thing i have lots of lettuce and spinach in the garden for the taking.