Italian Meatballs

After a month and a half of being sick, I'm tired of eating applesauce and canned soup or crackers for meals. I finally broke down and had a moment of motivation and decided to make a *REAL* meal!!

I got this recipe from my Dad (check out his food blog). This is my go-to when I don't know what else to make, and when I want to make a cheap and easy but delicious meal.

1 lb lean ground beef *

½ cup bread crumbs (preferably white) **

1 egg, slightly beaten

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (or to taste or use fresh minced)

1/2 teaspoon italian seasoning (or to taste)

1 teaspoons parsley flakes (or to taste)

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

dash of cayenne pepper (to taste or optional)

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together (everything above except for meat and egg)

2. Mix dry ingredients with meat by hand, knead together in a big bowl (Dad uses disposable nitrile gloves for this and for meatball forming, way easier to clean up)

3. Knead in slightly beaten egg

4. Form into ~1.75” diameter meatballs (should make about 12 meatballs - I find it usually makes more!)

5. Place on a foiled and sprayed cookie sheet (if you use less lean [i.e. cheaper] ground beef put on a sprayed cookie rack on top of the foil so they won’t cook in the grease)

6. Bake at 375 for about 20 – 25 minutes until slightly browning (don’t listen to anyone telling you to cook them in the sauce or in a frying pan)

Meanwhile, cook pasta about 30 seconds less than the package al dente recommendation, and heat sauce in a large frying pan. Combine ½ of the cooked meatballs (3 per person per meal), the drained and rinsed slightly undercooked pasta, into the heated sauce and simmer for about 10 minutes. Swerve it up with vegetable of choice. (Mine was brussels sprouts tonight! Slice them up thinly, and saute in a couple tablespoons of butter with salt and pepper. YUM!)

* Best if you can double this recipe by using 1lb of ground beef and 1lb of ground plain pork {not sausage} (makes a bunch of meatballs for freezing which you can just take out and plop in sauce to thaw and heat)

** Bread crumbs can be had for free if you take ends of your bread loaves and freeze them, then when you need bread crumbs, take them out of the freezer, break into ~1 – 2” pieces and put them in your mini food processor while still frozen. Whole wheat bread or “weird natural bread” really doesn’t work well for bread crumbs.