Meatballs!

Because who doesn't love ball-shaped food? Speaking of, I've yet to find Schweddy Balls at the store... humph. Anyway. Here's our recipe for meatballs. It's heavily modified from this one, so if you raise your eyebrows at the ketchup and cinnamon, that's where that idea came from. It works!

These meatballs happen to be gluten-free. You could definitely substitute regular bread crumbs, but I would use only 1/4 cup. I used 1/2 cup here because I didn't plan ahead so I just toasted a few pieces of GF bread and crumbled it with my hands, so the crumbs were bigger (see in the pic above).

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 large yellow onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, microplane grated
• 1 egg
• 1/2 c gluten-free bread crumbs
• 1/4 c grated zucchini (about half a small-medium zuke)
• 1/4 c ketchup
• 1/4 c fresh oregano leaves (about 2 Tbsp after mincing)
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon

Dump everything in a big bowl. Wash hands thoroughly. Go at it, squishing and mixing with your hands and squeezing it through your fingers. When mixed well, I patted it all into a big ball and stuck it in the fridge for an hour so we could go vote, and the time chilling seemed to help firm it up well for forming into balls.

Pre-heat the oven to 375°, pour some olive oil in a cast iron skillet (or other pan that can transfer into the oven), put a bit more oil on your hands to prevent sticking, and form the meat mixture into balls, ping pong to golf ball sized. Turn the skillet to medium-medium high and when it's hot, put the meatballs on the pan. I got 26 balls from this mix, and they all just barely fit in the pan. Sear for 2-3 minutes, then use tongs to turn over. Sear another 2-3 minutes, then transfer the whole pan into a pre-heated oven for 25 minutes. Pull one out and cut into it to make sure it's done before taking the skillet out of the oven.

Serve over pasta with a tomato-based pasta sauce on top. I completely spaced out about the need for sauce (duh) until the meatballs had already started, so I threw together a super fast tomato basil sauce:

• 28 ounce can organic crushed tomatoes
• a ton of fresh basil leaves, diced (maybe about 2 cups loose leaves?)
• 1/2 large yellow onion, diced (the other half from making the meatballs - convenient!)
• 2-6 cloves of garlic, depending on taste (I used 7!), microplane grated (store-bought crushed garlic is acceptable, but fresh tastes better and it only takes like 10 seconds)
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 Tbsp olive oil

Mix the crushed tomatoes, olive oil and basil in a pot, heat on medium high. In a separate pan, saute the diced onions in olive oil for 5 minutes or so until translucent. Add to the sauce, along with the microplaned garlic and lemon juice. Simmer 15-30 minutes or so. Serve over the meatballs and pasta. NOM! Monkey and Unicorn both loved this dish, which was awesome. Both kids are rather carnivorous, but the great things about meatballs is that they're not JUST meat. Well, mostly, but I can at least pretend that the three shreds of zucchini they probably ate counts as a vegetable. Humor me.