Dinner Diva's Goes Swedish

I love all the theme's that our dinner group comes up with since it is never the same thing and it's all on the hostess to select her theme for that month. For this month Janet selected Swedish cuisine and I was on appetizers. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is Swedish Meatballs! I actually couldn't find anything else that I was inspired to make so I went with the meatballs. I've never actually had the Swedish meatballs they serve at Ikea, the last time we were there Mike didn't let me get any so I can't attest to those one, but I can attest to my Aunt Susan's Swedish Meatballs, which she makes every year on Christmas Eve. When I asked Mom for her recipe I thought it got cut off because there really wasn't much to it. So I improvised and basically mixed together a combination of several different recipes I read online. The end result actually turned out pretty good and I would make them again. This is how I think I made them, or the best I can remember....

Swedish Meatballs 
Source: A Rachel Original/Aunt Susan

Meatballs
1 lb. Chop Meat
1/2 cup bread crumbs
2 tablespoons Ketchup
1/4 - 1/2 cup milk (I used 2%)
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 small onion chopped
1 tsp olive oil

Sauce
1 container/can Brown Gravy
1 cup beef broth
couple tablespoons sour cream (optional)

Preheat oven to 400F. Combine the bread crumbs and skim milk in a large mixing bowl, starting with 1/4 cup. Let sit for 5 minutes, or until the bread has soaked up the milk, add more as needed. Sautee the onion in olive oil.  Add the onion, egg, chop meat, ketchup and salt. Use your hards to very gently mix the ingredients. Put into 1/4 cup to measure out and cut that in half (so 1/8th of a cup) and roll into a ball for each meatball. Arrange the meatballs on a baking sheet, being sure that the balls don’t touch each other. Bake for 15 minutes. Roll the balls over so that a different side is touching the sheet and bake for another 15 minutes. While the meatballs are baking, start your sauce, simmer the brown gravy and whisk in beef broth. Add meatballs when cooked and simmer until meatballs are coated nicely in sauce. Add sour cream (optional, I threw it in since I had some on hand).

The meatballs were a big hit for our Swedish dinner, I think there were only about 5 left over. And for the main event we started off with homemade Swedish cucumber salad, which I loved, I adore cucumbers and Janet even made her own homemade rye bread. Janet also made this incredible "Swedish" lasagna that her uncle makes at his restaurant in Sweden, now this lasagna is not for those that are counting their calories when you hear the amount of cheese in this thing but it was delicious. The primary cheese in the lasagna was gouda!!! Which I love since my trip to Russia in high school when they made me spaghetti with gouda, I need to pick some gouda up on my next trip to Trader Joe's. And even though she forgot to peel the apples before she made the apple pie for dessert, Michelle's Swedish apple pie was delicious, I really liked the twist on it. That was nothing compared to me cooking a knife with the pork tenderloin last month!