Meatball Marinara Sandwich

I saw a version of this recipe here, from the Pioneer Woman and decided it looked to delicious not to try it for ourselves. I slightly adapted the recipe to make it more my own, and also decided we might as well eat the sandwiches on deli buns, instead of eating 3 or 4 dinner rolls. Either way, this turned out really tasty.

1 lb ground beef

1/2 cup Italian flavored bread crumbs

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 TBS garlic

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

2 TBS olive oil

1/4 of an onion, chopped

16 oz marinara sauce **

**You can use a jar of sauce, or make your own. I chose to make my own similar to this recipe, but I left out the salt, pepper and garlic since the meatballs had so much flavor already.

deli rolls

mozzarella cheese, shredded

1. Put ground beef, bread crumbs, garlic, salt, pepper and milk in a large bowl.
2. Knead together with hands, mixing thoroughly.
3. Roll meat into tablespoon sized balls.
3. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large pan over medium heat.
4. Add onions and saute for 1 minute.
5. Add meatballs between the onions and brown for 1 minute. (I had to do this in 2 batches).
6. Flip meatballs over carefully and brown for 1 minute.
7. Pour marinara sauce into the pan.
8. Put lid on pan and shake gently to mix.
9. With lid on pan, allow sauce to simmer for 20 minutes.
10. After 20 minutes, cut deli rolls open in the middle.
11. Put about 6 meatballs on each roll, with extra sauce.
12. Top meatballs with desired amount of mozzarella cheese.
13. Eat immediately and enjoy!

This makes enough for about 4 sandwiches. We each had one sandwich and we were still a LITTLE hungry, (especially Nate because he only had eaten plums for breakfast/lunch). So Nate asked if I would share one with him. I told him I wanted less than half, but he told me I had to eat half. Anyway, we had a good amount of sauce left over and a few meatballs (which would have been perfect to freeze, and enjoy on pasta later). But I forgot. And we went to Lowe's to get a light bulb, and then to get dessert and it sat on the counter the whole time. So needless to say, our dog, Aspen, enjoyed some of it this morning on top of his breakfast (of dog food of course). Lesson learned. Put leftovers in the fridge right away, because it really is a shame to waste them.

What's your worst story of accidentally wasting food?