Dinner With a Smile

I hate to cook. I hate everything about it. I have no real reason for my disdain for cooking, I just don't like it. But every once in a while I do it, mostly out of necessity, but nothing amazing or that involves a lot of work. Once again, I don't get the tingles when I do it.

Maybe it's because the kids always piss and moan about what I am making, someone has to complain, even though they have never tried something ever in their life, they "don't like" whatever it is that they see. It's tedious & I hate it. If I ever acted like that when I was little and my mom made dinner, all holy hell would break loose and I would end up starving. I never got "catered to" in regard to food... but that there is a whole other story, post, whatever.

The thing is, I made dinner and it was fan-freaking-tastic. Of course it was based off of a picture that I saw on Pinterest. Go figure right? It looked good and when Richie & I sat there trying to decide what we were going to have for dinner, we decided to just go to the store and find something.

And that is when the picture pinned onto my virtual pin board popped into my head.

It was pretty darn good. Although, once I got home I realized that I didn't have all of the ingredients that we needed, so we had to improvise. Oh, I also hope that you aren't expecting pictures because I didn't take any. I wasn't quite in the mood to infect my camera with raw meat and let whatever gunk there was develop into some crazy infectious disease that would more than likely turn into some crazy pandemic.

This picture, not mine of course, is what dinner was supposed to look like:

My recipe was modified from Sunshine & Bones

But this is what I did & my recipe re-over

1 package of 6 sub rolls
1 1/4 cup bread crumbs
2 small shallots minced
1/2 can of diced tomatoes (I used the zesty chilli kind)
1/2 cup whole or lowfat milk
6 tablespoons ketchup (hot & spicy)
Regular ketchup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 large egg, lightly beaten
Garlic salt and pepper (eye balled)
Steakhouse seasoning grinder (eyeballed)
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
shredded cheddar cheese
cheddar jack cheese


Step One:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Step Two:
I took the bread I bought and halved them. The bread was actually pretty soft, so that wasn't much of a problem. I then lined my large cookie sheet with tin foil and placed each of the halves down on it. After it was halved and on the cookie sheet, I popped them into the oven for 5 minutes.

Step Three:
While the bread was toasting, I took a bowl and mixed in the meat, an egg, bread crumbs, the minced shallots, milk, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, diced zesty chilli flavored tomatoes, salt & pepper, and seasonings, and kneaded it all together. Richie made the comment that it looked like we were making meatloaf. I never made meatloaf before, so apparently that is what it is like.

Step Four:
I took the scoop that I purchased for making cake balls, and I scooped out the meat mixture onto the bread, end to end. I then popped it back into the oven and cooked it for 22 minutes (or until the meat reaches a temperature of 160 degrees, which is roughly around 20-25 minutes).


Step Five:
After I took them out of the oven, I took regular ketchup and squirted some on each of the sandwiches. I then topped it with my cheese. Throw it back in the oven for 4 minutes, and viola, dinner is served.


The kids loved it and the bread will be really toasty and hard, but where the meat is sitting on it, you can scoop out the soft bread and eat it with the meat topping. Yumm-O.

And also, you do not have to pre-cook the meat before adding it. Mine cooked perfectly. The hot & spicy ketchup & the diced tomatoes did not make any difference in terms of heat, but when you get a bite with the tomatoes, it was fantastic!


Like I said, the heathens children ate it all and I even got "this is the best meal I ever ate", and coming from them, that is rare.