"Mamma Meatballs!"

As many of you know, the wind storm on Sunday changed our comfort zone when we lost power for 50 hours. I had plenty of candles to light, thanks to Rachel and Jason's wedding in 2006, and my love for Yankee Candles. The problem for me was no coffee, no cable, no computer and no toast! Rachel invited Becca and I over for morning coffee and phone charging time since they had electricity.

Even though we packed ice chests and beverage coolers with food from our 2 refrigerators and big freezer, we still had to throw out plenty of food. We cooked the meat that had thawed on our grill to server at a later date but I had to do something with 3 1/2 pounds of ground veal. I was having a difficult time finding it in at the store to make my meatballs with and once Kroger had it in stock, I bought 4 packs of it. Today I had to buy beef and pork to mix with it to make meatballs. That's 9 pounds of meat and 18 eggs. It took me 2 1/2 hours to make 154 meatballs today. (I ate 5 of them)

Here are the treasured meatballs in the making. I was able to use fresh basil from my garden. Next time you come for dinner, guess what I'll be serving!