Some families are fortunate. Instead of each individual relative having a particular dish they hate, there are only a few things that most of the family will refuse to eat. Unfortunately, this doesn't describe my family by a long shot.
My oldest brother will not eat pinto beans. I loathe liver. And my second brother hates almost anything with a cream sauce.
It's a shame, because two of my favorite dishes to make, and eat, are beef stroganoff and Swedish meatballs.
I learned to make Swedish meatballs in the mid-90s. At the time, my second brother and I were sharing a house, barely making rent and utilities, and a lot of our meals came courtesy of Hamburger Helper. I took a trip to IKEA one weekend and had their Swedish meatballs--and thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Tasty little meatballs in a rich, savory cream sauce! I searched until I found a recipe, drove to the store to pick up my ingredients (sour cream, beef broth, ground beef and pork, and nutmeg), and headed home to make my newfound ambrosia.
So there I was an hour later, with my meatballs simmering in the broth, and my brother came in. He glanced at the pan and asked, "What is that?"
"Meatballs. I'm making Swedish meatballs."
"And what's this stuff on the counter?"
"Sour cream for the sauce."
He grimaced and headed for the living room. I heard the TV come on, and a Tuna Helper commercial came on. I peeked around the doorway to watch, because the commercial always made me laugh with the way the Glove cooed, "oodles of creamy noodles!" at the end.
With, "Oodles of creamy noodles!", my brother suddenly got to his feet and announced, "Yecch! You go ahead and have your meatballs. I've lost my appetite."
As you can imagine, my ego plummeted through the floor. I finished the dish in a foul temper, and if my brother had come back into the kitchen, I'd have brained him with the pan.
The meatballs didn't come out that well. Canned broth makes them salty, not savory, and I'd added too much sour cream to the sauce. I ate my portion anyway, defiant to the end. Who cared what my brother thought anyway? Stupid idiot. If he could let one commercial get to him--and what was that about?--then he could starve for all I cared. Here I tried to keep the menu varied so we weren't eating Hamburger Heave-Up all week, and he couldn't do anything but piss and moan. The hell with him.
I saw him the next morning. I was determined not to let him know he'd hurt my feelings, so I just gave him a cool, "Good morning," instead of throwing him the hairy eyeball. To my surprise, he said, "I'm sorry I didn't eat dinner last night. I've just never been able to eat Swedish meatballs since I went down the Grand Canyon with Bob."
At once my ears perked up.
# # # #
"Bob" was a guy my brother met when our mother managed a complex in Phoenix, back in the early 1980s. He was a cocaine addict, an alcoholic, and a real outdoorsman who liked to hike into the wilderness for weeks at a time, and come back looking like death warmed over--but still alive, which made young men like my brother wonder how the hell he pulled it off. One year, Bob invited my brother to come with him down Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon. They'd raft down the river, he said, and camp, and spend some time alone with nature, and generally have a good time.
Knowing Bob's idea of a good time meant coke, booze, and probably weed--and knowing he'd need more than that to make that kind of trek--my brother packed wisely: food, pans, matches, and his camping gear. He also stashed Snickers bars in his backpack, just as a treat.
Bob actually brought freeze-dried food (which I guess was sort of a novelty at the time--it was to my brother), water containers, and, of course, powder for his nose and whiskey in his flask. My brother told me, though, that the climb down Bright Angel wasn't the problem. It was rafting down the river that was the problem. Bob started fooling around at one point and nearly capsized the damn boat. When they finally got over to the riverbank, they were soaked. My brother had lost his matches. Bob complained about losing his cigarettes. It was growing late, they were both hungry and tired, and they'd lost precious time.
My brother started gathering wood, thinking he'd use tinder to set it alight for a fire. As he gathered wood, Bob took out his sleeping bag, stretched it out, and laid down on it. As he worked, my brother grew more and more resentful--why the hell was Bob just lying around while he was working? The hell with it, he figured, and got his own sleeping bag. He unrolled it and prepared to lie down and try to sleep.
Bob finally sat up and said, "I can make us something to eat, if you're hungry."
My brother said that it was almost dark by this point, and neither of them had eaten for hours. His first impulse was to say, "Well, no shit, Sherlock; I'd eat you if I thought I wouldn't throw you back up." But he only nodded, and Bob started rooting around in his pack.
He took out a saucepan and filled it halfway with water from the river--not going out from the bank, but just dipping it into the shallows. My brother started despairing of getting any kind of a decent meal, and decided to try to light the fire. As he tried getting the tinder to light, he watched Bob open a package of freeze-dried food. Bob showed it to him. "I'm gonna make us some Swedish meatballs," he said.
"Great, Bob, now let me get the fire going."
"Oh, that's no problem," and Bob pulled out a Zippo lighter. At that point, my brother said, he could have cheerfully brained him with the saucepan.
As the wood caught and started to burn--and I'm not sure they were legally supposed to have it going in the first place there!--Bob emptied the contents of the packet into the cloudy water in the saucepan, and stirred them with a stick. Then he shoved the saucepan in the middle of the smoking wood. The would-be fire hadn't even really started when he yanked the pan out and said, "Okay! It's time to eat!"
My brother said what was in that pan was a grayish paste, studded here and there with lumps that might have been meat, and might have been creatures from the river. At any rate, he looked at Bob and said, "No thanks. You eat it."
And Bob proceeded to yank a fork from his pack . . . and ate it.
That, my friends, is what I call a successful PSA against drug abuse.
My brother ate his Snickers bars that night.
# # # #
Although we patched things up that morning, and he explained that that experience made the Tuna Helper slogan, "oodles of creamy noodles!", a nauseating reminder, my brother refused to try my Swedish meatballs.
Just something about cream sauces that turn his stomach, I guess.
Hopefully no one here suffers from the same malady. But here is my recipe for Swedish meatballs--the recipe is NOT authentic, but adjusted to suit my own tastes, so it's a "Mock Swedish" dish. I also do not pour mine over noodles. I serve them as they are, with wheat bread (I don't like rye) or with boiled potatoes.
Gemina13's Mock Swedish Meatballs
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground pork
One white onion, minced
2 cups beef stock
3 cups sour cream
2 Tbsp oil
1 Tbsp minced garlic
2 Tbsp flour
1 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
2 cloves garlic, smashed
Salt and pepper (1 tsp each)
3 eggs
In a mixing bowl, combine beef and pork, smashed garlic, half the minced onion, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper, and eggs. Roll into 1/2-inch meatballs, or a little larger if you like--but no larger than 1 inch. Set in a shallow dish, cover, and refrigerate for one hour.
In an 8-inch skillet, over medium heat, add 2 tbsp oil--or 1 tbsp of oil and 1 tbsp of butter, for extra flavor. When hot, add the meatballs and brown thoroughly. Remove the meatballs from the pan to a plate covered with paper towels. To the pan, add the rest of the onion, the flour, paprika, nutmeg, garlic, and salt and pepper to taste; saute over low heat until the flour has browned. Add 1 cup of stock and deglaze the pan; add the meatballs and simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes, adding stock if the sauce gets too thick.
When the meatballs are cooked, add the sour cream a cup at a time, until the sauce reaches the desired consistency. Serve hot with boiled potatoes or fresh bread.