The second recipe I tried this week that got mixed reviews was sausage balls. I thought for sure it would be a hit with the kids and Husband. I, personally, don't like sausage, so I went into it knowing I wouldn't be thrilled. It actually called for an ingredient I'm betting most people have in their house, but I had to go out and buy just for this...Bisquick. Now, to be honest, I'm not really even sure what Bisquick is, so that should have been my first clue that this meal might not be winner. Regardless, the making of these was a bit more difficult than I anticipated. Getting the Bisquick mixed in with the sausage was frustrating. It was just very dry, and I cut the Bisquick by one cup (thanks to my neighbor's advice, I can't imagine if I would have used all three cups!). Once it all actually got mixed up, it went smoothly. For Monster, these were a huge hit. The kid gobbled them up. Sunshine just looked at them, even though sausage is one food she completely loves. I ate a couple, and they weren't horrible, but they were dry, so I could see why Sunshine didn't like them. Husband thought they were OK, but, again, very dry. I made the dipping sauce the recipe has with it and he definitely didn't like that (the kids and I don't like Mustard, so none of us even tried it) I'm thinking that with the right kind of dipping sauce, these would have been much better. Another problem with these is that they don't reheat well. It makes so many balls that, unless you're cooking for about 5-8 people, you're going to have a lot of leftovers. They are dry to begin with, so reheated, they are even worse. Maybe one day I'll make these again, but not any time in the near future.
My biggest problem seems to be finding new recipes that don't have a bunch of added junk. We aren't a processed food family. If you check out our fridge and pantry, we have barely anything that has ingredients we can't pronounce. We don't have any foods with added food coloring. Does that mean I make everything from scratch? Heck no! We just don't have a lot of canned, boxed, or frozen stuff on hand. Winter's in Ohio make this pretty difficult because of the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. We don't like having to buy our produce from Chile. We prefer to buy local. Sound like a food snob don't I? Well, I kind of am. A friend of mine just posted some recipes she found with no processed foods. I'll be trying out some of those, but I can almost guarantee Little Miss Sunshine is not going to be happy with any of it. Thankfully, she'll eat vegetables now *knock on wood*, so I load her up on those! I'm also on a bread making kick, so she can load up on that as well!
And as a side note, I do occasionally make "junk" food. I just made brownies with artificially colored St. Patrick's Day sprinkles on top!