Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs!!!

I have been super busy with an amazing baby shower in our honor last weekend, work, and both kids are playing soccer right now and everything is in full swing! So, I haven't posted for a while, but I thought I'd kick this week off with another recipe...mostly because that's the one constant in my life is cooking for my family. My kids totally love spaghetti & meatballs...why? Idk, there's not too many kids that don't, I guess it's the infrequency that they get it? Anyway, last weekend I planned on making homemade meatballs in the crockpot because I threw some together a few weeks ago over my lunch hour after sifting through some Pinterest recipes, and they ended being a real hit with the fam.

I personally like any meal that's easy to make, and uses ingredients that I generally keep on hand. I have had some serious food aversions to tomatoes though in the last two weeks, it's causing immediate heartburn & indigestion, but it sounded so good I had to go for it!

Italian Meatballs

Ingredients:

- 2 lbs of ground italian pork sausage (you could substitute any ground meat)
- 2 eggs
- 3/4-1 C panko bread crumbs
- 1 TBSP parsley flakes (or you could use fresh)
- 3/4 C shredded parmesan cheese
- 2 tsp black pepper
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp onion powder
- 1 TBSP minced dried onion
- 2 tsp Italian seasoning

Method:

I'm pretty fancy, so I dump all of my ingredients in a bowl and then manhandle mix them with my hands. You could slightly beat your eggs first, and use a kitchen utensil to mix these together, but honestly because you're going to be rolling the meatballs together with your hands anyway, I just like to skip the middle man! Once everything is evenly incorporated, I just grab the amount of mixture to fit the size of meatballs I'm going to make. I generally make mine so that 2 meatballs is a serving. After I form my meatballs I start lining the bottom of my crockpot with them, and I don't usually prep the inside of my crockpot first. 

Spaghetti Sauce

Ingredients:

- 28 oz can crushed tomatoes

- 28 oz can tomato puree

- 1 stem & leaves of fresh basil chopped

- 1 TBSP Italian seasonings

- 2 tsp onion powder

- 2 tsp garlic powder

- 1 tsp sea salt (I ran out of my beloved himalayan sea salt)

-1 tsp black pepper

* Note: I would probably use more like 2 tsp of sea salt if I used ground turkey or ground chicken for my meatballs, but since I used pork and it's naturally saltier, I didn't feel the need to do more than my 1 tsp. of salt :D

The reason I make my own sauce, is two fold. For one thing it's super simple, that's only 8 ingredients, and most likely you have 5 of them on hand at any given time. Also, most spaghetti sauces are either filled with some sort of canola oil, or soybean oil, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and other nasty fillers that my body doesn't need. SO...I find this just as easy, and with the slow cooking method the flavors mingle together and it is absolutely rich tasting & delish!

Method:

I usually use the same bowl I mixed my meatball ingredients in to cut down on dishes, and because everything is headed for the crockpot and will be cooked thoroughly! I just empty my canned goods, sprinkle in my seasonings, and chopped basil, give everything a good stir and then pour it over my meatballs in the crockpot.

I cooked this in my crockpot on low for 4.5 hours, and then mine automatically switches over to the 'warm' setting, and that gave me time to throw together a quick salad, steam some broccoli, & boil some brown rice spaghetti noodles. The meatballs were amazing, perfectly cooked, not dry, the sauce was rich, and let me tell you, I spent the whole night NOT sleeping due to the fact that I had some serious heartburn & indigestion! Apparently baby A did not feel like spaghetti & meatballs in a red sauce on Sunday. However, it was a hit with the rest of the family. My recipe ended making 15 pretty big sized meatballs, so of course the kids made plans to pack meatballs in their thermos for Monday lunches :D

Give it a try and tailor it to your needs, if you can't eat pork, use chicken or turkey like I suggested. It probably took 15-20 minutes total start to finish to get everything in the crockpot...not too shabby for a delicious homemade dinner that's still healthy!

***Update 4/28/16 I made these last night with ground turkey instead of pork, they weren't as 'spicy' naturally, but they tasted amazing! I used a little extra salt like I mentioned, but they turned out great! ***

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