Spaghetti & Meatballs

Tonight's dinner was a nice combination of easy, popular, and cheap -- spaghetti and meatballs.

My usual approach for meatballs is to combine the ground meat (in this case, ground turkey breast) with egg, milk, and fine breadcrumbs, mixed by hand and made into balls. I opted for the longer but easier method of cooking them -- baked in the oven while we did various other things, like clean the kitchen (the dishes were really getting out of hand after our weekend of ad hoc meals and snacks) and try to comfort The Napless Wonder in her exhausted misery (poor thing was ready for bed by 730 pm...wonder when she'll wake up....).

For the sauce, I mixed some canned fire roasted tomatoes with some cherry tomatoes that were threatening to go squishy and a can of cream of mushroom soup to make a tomato cream sauce. We had some red pepper puree that I'd frozen and then defrosted, which added a little bit of invisible vitamin power to the whole concoction. The pasta was whole wheat spaghettini.

Unfortunately, there were no leftover noodles or meatballs to send in our girl's lunch :( she likes noodles and meatballs quite a bit, but we were hungry it seems! We do have some leftover sauce, and I'm thinking about making either some kind of stromboli or or else lasagna with it. We do have a container of fresh spinach to contribute to either meal, and some nice lasagna noodles....but not much in the way of cheese. But meal planning is a task for tomorrow, when I'll actually know what meats to plan around.

Dinner tomorrow will either be North African stew or banana curry shrimp -- both will be from the freezer. Since it's a Tuesday, quick and easy will rule the day.