The past three days have been exciting and filled with guests. My closest friends and one of my brothers came over to see us and the city. One of the meals I made was spaghetti with sauce…but no meatballs. I didn’t think it would be a big deal…but my brother Yuriy and “brother from another mother” Eric immediately asked “Where’s the meat?!” I told them to get over it (not my best hostess behavior..I know!) and we proceeded to clean our plates of any noodles and sauce.

I decided to make some spaghetti for dinner tonight..but thank God, I had some ground beef in the freezer to make some meatballs! My husband loves meat…and its absence would not go unnoticed!

As much as I would love to tell you that I made homemade meatballs without a recipe…I cannot because that would be a lie. I typed in “meatball recipe” into Google and was met with a ton of options. I picked a recipe from allrecipe.com (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/italian-spaghetti-sauce-with-meatballs/detail.aspx) because it listed all of the ingredients I have on hand. I disregarded the sauce recipe, since I have plenty of store bought sauce in my fridge. So as Andrea Bocelli crooned away in a language (Italian) that I do not understand, but recognize it’s beauty and romance, I set off to make some Italian fare!

• MEATBALLS
• 1/2 pound lean ground beef
• 1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
• 1-1/2 teaspoons dried parsley
• 1-1/2 teaspoons grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 egg, beaten

This made 11 fairly good sized meatballs. I heated about 1/4 cup of olive oil in a pan and put in the meatballs. I reduced the heat to medium to allow them to cook…not just brown.

While the spaghetti was cooking (I used Luigi Vitelli), I heated up the marinara sauce on medium heat. The Marinara Sauce that I used was Union Market Marinara Sauce. The great thing about this sauce is 1) it’s delicious, 2) I know every single ingredient that went into making the sauce.

Once the sauce was fairly heated, I dropped in the meatballs and allowed the sauce and meatballs to simmer. Suggestion-cover the pan or you will have red sauce dots all over your stove 🙂

Salad:

I cut up some tomatoes and cucumbers (from Mrs. Sushko’s garden 🙂 and tossed them with Spring Greens and red onion. Naturally, I put out the Zesty Italian dressing:)

Additionally, I baked some Pillsbury Biscuits..because no Italian meal is truly complete until there is a bread of some sort!

Finished product:

The Verdict? Great hit. There was plenty for our tummies and enough for Greg to take to work for lunch. I told him he better let his Italian co-worker know that I made meatballs!