A New Take on an Old Favorite- Tomato-Cream Spaghetti and Sweet Potato Meatballs

A tasty recipe from last night!

Tomato-Cream Spaghetti and Sweet Potato Meatballs

The Sauce- it's less of a recipe and more of a process!

The sauce begins as ordinary cream sauce- Earth Balance Buttery Spread and Wondra flour mixed over low heat into a paste.  Slowly add milk (I used a mix of skim and half and half).  Add salt, pepper, and Penzey's Black and Red to taste.  I also added a splash of white wine.  When the sauce began to thicken, I added sliced fresh Parmesan cheese and some Kraft Grated Parmesan when I ran out of the real stuff.  Then, *sneaky alert* I added about a half cup of pureed cauliflower. 

In the magic bullet I chopped together minced garlic, green and purple onions (from the bucket!), and fresh basil and oregano leaves (also from the bucket!).  Then, I pureed about 6 fresh roma tomatoes, skins and all.  All of the pureed goodness went into the cream sauce, turning it into a tomato cream sauce.  Because I like my sauce a bit chunky, I diced up 4 more romas and added them directly into the sauce to give it some texture.  The sauce simmered for about an hour, then I let it sit covered for another hour before I simmered it again (when adding the meatballs)

Sweet Potato Meatballs

• 1 pound of grass-fed ground beef
• panko bread crumbs
• ground flax seed
• about a 1/2 cup of pureed sweet potato
• one egg
• Penzey's dehydrated onions
• garlic salt, salt, pepper, Penzey's Italian Herbs, Brady Street Cheese Sprinkle, and Fox Point Seasoning

Put all of the ingredients into a large bowl and mix together.  I find that the only way to mix it well is by squishing it my hands- gross but effective!  I rolled the mixture into small (bouncy ball sized) meatballs.  The 1 pound of meat yielded about 40 mini meatballs.

I cooked the meatballs by adding them into a pot of boiling vegetable broth (water with vegetable soup base mixed in).  Add the meatballs, cover, and boil until no longer pink.  When the meatballs were fully cooked, I added them directly into the tomato-cream sauce.

I served the meatballs and sauce over a mix of regular and whole wheat spaghetti noodles.  Yum.