Spaghetti and Meatballs and Homemade Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

I promise, I'm still here. I know the posts have been a little scarce, but it's been an insane month. We've had several neighborhood birthdays, which gave me a great excuse to open up our home and cook and cook and cook. We've also been snowed in or iced over 3 times since Christmas, which isn't the norm for Eastern North Carolina. It all adds up to insanity around our house with the kids being home a grand total of 2 extra weeks and so many people around! I've also been so fortunate in regards to The Washington Magazine, not only was I lucky enough to be featured in a 5 page article about my love of cooking and this blog, but I also get to prepare the food every other month for photographs of the recipes featured in every edition. Oh! And how could I forget cake for 250 people! I got a chance to say thank you to so many of hard working City of Washington employees and make 5 huge sheet cakes for their annual appreciation luncheon. That took every bit of 2 days of mixing, baking, frosting.

All of this activity prompted me to write this post....how to cook real food when there's so little time and also, some great grocery store deals to help you feel better about what you're feeding your family.

Great grocery stores out here in the middle of nowhere are in no way easy to get to. Over the past month, I've been lucky enough, twice, to find myself 2 hours west of here in Raleigh and gotten to stock up at Trader Joe's and Costco. However, a little closer to home, we have The Fresh Market in Greenville, about a 30 minute drive. It's a high end, pretty pricey gourmet and specialty food grocery store, but if you go for the sales and not all of your normal grocery shopping, it's so worth the trip for quality ingredients! Their newest promotion is a Thursday only special, but its fantastic! It's everything you need for a fantastic and quick weeknight dinner of all REAL FOOD for $20. This month's feature is spaghetti and meat sauce and I couldn't have been happier with our dinner!

By the way, this post isn't sponsored in any way (although, hey! Fresh Market! I'd love to write about your food in exchange for groceries!), just a great tip for REAL FOOD quick dinners on a budget.

So....for $20 this month on Thursdays you get 1 lb of lean ground sirloin, 1 lb of organic spaghetti, 1 jar of organic sweet basil spaghetti sauce, 1 french baguette, 1 jar of garlic salt, 2 bags of organic romaine salad mix, and 1 huge container of cut mixed tropical fresh fruit. It would easily feed 5 or 6 people.


Using this special, I'm giving you guys the recipes for my awesome mini meatballs and homemade ranch dressing. My kids are crazy about ranch dressing (like almost every other kid) but after reading the back of a Hidden Valley bottle, I cringed every time they asked for it. This prompted me to look up several ranch dressing recipes and design my own. It was a hit! Hooray for cool, tangy, creamy ranch with fillers and no preservatives! Time to get cooking! Recipes after the break!