BBQ Meatballs and Mac & Cheese

I found these recipes this week from that Pioneer Woman's blog. Andrew likes anything bbq and i like any pasta, so I thought it would be a perfect dinner for us. 

These two dishes are simple but time consuming, at least I think they are. I made the meatball first because they needed to be baked for 45 mins, and during the baking time, I could make the mac & cheese.

I too tried to take all the ingredients out first, (I don't usually do it, but for the photography purpose, I did this time, and surprisingly, J C did too!). The meatball recipe calls for instant oat, which I don't have, so I used cooked rice instead (just like every time I substitute it when I used meatloaf hehe). 

I mixed ground beef, onion, milk, rice, black pepper, and salt together. 

Then I rolled them into balls! I did learn a trick from the Pioneer Woman, put the meatballs in the freezer for about 5 mins, I think it made the balls firm, easier for the next step, which is dredging them in flour. 

Then I browned the balls in a pan. 

While they were being cooked in the pan, I quickly fixed the sauce. Mix ketchup, vinegar, sugar, more onion, and my favorite, Worcestershire sauce (yummm), oh some Tabasco too. I put the browned meatballs (not fully cooked yet) in a baking dish, poured the sauce on top, popped it in the oven for 45 mins, and tada!

So, while the meatballs were in the oven, I started to make the mac & cheese (yay for multi-tasking!)

Cooked the Elbows pasta until it was just a bit too hard to eat (that's what it says in the recipe), then drained. Then I failed while I was making the sauce. I followed the instruction, melted some butter, and whisked in some flour, however, my pot wasn't hot enough to cook the flour what it supposed to be, (it is a very important step, but I failed, so the mac & cheese was doughy). 

Then I added milk, dry mustard, cheese, salt, and pepper. Then added elbows. Done, you could put it in a baking dish and sprinkle more cheese on top, then put in oven until the cheese melted, but I didn't have more cheese, so I just ate it as it was. 

Then I cheated, bought some bag-steam veggie as side dish. And there you go, my dinner :D