Meatball casserole

I feel kinda bad ending a week on a "don't try this" recipe, but I gotta post it sometime. It's for the greater good, ya know!? Pinterest is a finicky bizzo, and although sometimes the ideas leave me screaming from the rooftops about their success, other times Main Man says I'm grounded from it for a while to think about what I just did. This was one of the latter times...

 

This recipe, my friends, is being tagged to the SNAFUS files.

 

Let's talk about my other recent Pinterest fail, which was sparkler pictures at our wedding. I now have a two inch scar on my arm that I'm pretty sure will be a permanent reminder of our wedding day (how sentimental...) and a hole in the back of my dress that looks like someone put a large cigarette out on my back. No biggie. We got a good shot or two, so it was worth it. Not like I'm going to wear the dress again, out on the town for our anniversary or anything. But I wouldn't recommend it, if you were in fact contemplating walking through a tunnel of 20 inch fire starters on your wedding night. Be informed about these decisions, folks.

 

This Pinterest fail was far less painful, and didn't leave me with any lasting scars. Do you remember when I made the skinny meatball subs? They were soooooo good! Like bite your tongue so no naughty words of exclamation slip out after your first bite, good. See how I'm redeeming myself with today's crap post by giving you a phenomenal recipe to try instead?! I care about you...

 

So I thought those meatballs would be perrrrrrfect in a meatball casserole that I saw on the aforementioned site, and I just so happened to have leftover meatballs frozen from my original batch. Well, here's how it went...

 

The recipe called for crescent roll on the bottom, but I thought cheesy garlic bread would slam this into another dimension. That may have been my downfall. This was the base of the casserole.

 

Then, you add your meatballs, and cover them with sauce. Instead of going with just a red sauce, I thought a two timing casserole with alfredo and marinara would be kicking. Another fork in the road that could've caused the pile up.

Italian seasoning and then top with fresh mozzarella...because we all know you can't go wrong there. And that's a true statement. The cheese was the best part of this arrangement.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes, until it's all warm and bubbly and yummy looking. It will fool you, I promise. It looks like a melted pile of warm fuzzy there, but it did not in fact produce a true warm fuzzy. I mean...I'm not sure what happened. The meatballs were good, the cheese was good. Something about the sauces being mixed together was off, although I'm not sure why, because I've made two timing pasta before with dual sauce parties. The garlic bread base though? That was a kick to the mouth. And not in a good way. In a "yeah, you suck" way. It was so soggy, it was like eating wet bread. Main Man actually looked at me after eating half of his plate (he was hungry) and said "Don't make this again, ok?".  I absolutely love that he's not scurrrrred to let me know when my skills are lacking and make sure he's never faced with the same plate of squish again.

 

Anywho...here's where it gets weird. We each ate a little that night, enough to kill the appetite and be done with it. But I was going to throw the rest away, and just couldn't bring myself to toss my hard earned, and tasty balled up meat spheres. Soooooo I plucked them out of the casserole and threw them into spagetti the following night. And there was where they found their true home...it was like the ending of Homeward Bound...they made it back to their roots! And we all lived happily ever after with not so much as a thought of ever making a casserole with meatballs again. The end.

 

Happy Friday, all!