Couple's kitchen therapy

My husband often complains that I never make the same recipe twice.  I always want to try something new.  A few weeks ago, I saw a recipe for authentic Swedish meatballs on one of my favorite food blogs, Simply Recipes.  My hubby just so happened to ask me if I could make Swedish meatballs sometime.  So I thought I'd give this one a try.

It's good that I had a quiet Sunday at home to make these meatballs, because they turned out to be way more time-consuming than I expected.  And there were a lot of unusual steps involved, like grating an onion (which made the whole house smell like onion for the rest of the night) and pulsing wet bread crumbs in the food processor.

I interrupted my hubby from his football-game watching to help fry up the meatballs and make the gravy.  As I've mentioned before, I'm still a beginning cook, and I have a weird aversion to anything involving a frying pan.  My husband, on the other hand, is the frying king.  Plus, he can make a mean gravy.  So I thought I'd leave these two tasks to the master.

It took him over an hour to fry up all the little meatballs in batches, then mix up the gravy and then finish cooking the meatballs in the gravy.  By that time, I was grumpy and starving and tired from being on my feet for several hours. 

So were these meatballs worth the effort?  Yes and no.  It was definitely a treat to sit down to a meal of Swedish meatballs and sweet potato fries.  But I wouldn't say that these meatballs were my favorite.  My husband, always the practical one, suggested that next time, instead of grating an onion, I should just use dried onion flakes and bread crumbs.  But I'm not an improviser like him.  I always have to follow a recipe to the letter.

Have you ever tried a recipe that was way beyond your skill level?  I'm glad I have a husband who is an amazing cook and can "save me" when I'm in over my head.