Tradition Addition

What a wonderfully busy weekend! It seems that every weekend from now until New Years is always wonderfully busy. This is my absolute favorite time of the year! My husband works crazy hours during the holidays and then I fill basically every one of his non-working hours with Christmas traditions (new and old)!

Yesterday we upheld an old tradition; we went Christmas tree hunting with some really great friends of ours. This tradition started as “Sunday, Funday” before we had children and was an entire day of mimosas (and other concoctions), Christmas trees, snacks and hot soup when we got home with the tree. The first year, we got home with our tree and added tortellini to the soup we had in the slow cooker. We figured we would play a round of cards while the pasta cooked so we all sat down at the dining room table. The next thing we knew, there was a slow soup waterfall flowing out of the slow cooker, down the cabinet and forming a lovely pond on the floor. Tortellini in the slow cooker must me supervised at all times…

These days we do things almost the same way but with our children and without mimosas. This year, our soup was even the same flavor as that first year. But what I wanted to share with you today was the meatball appetizer we dug into this time.

I believe I made mention in a previous post that I was popping some leftover sage stuffing in the freezer. If I had to guess (because I didn’t measure of course), I would say I had 3 cups of stuffing or so. As it turns out, that is enough stuffing to mix with 3 pounds of ground beef and 1 pound of pork sausage to make enough meatballs to feed an army… I’m thankful my friend offered to roll meatballs with me or I might still be doing it! Lucky for us, they turned out delicious and almost a dozen of them were eaten before I even got the sauce together!

For the sauce, I wanted to keep playing off of the Thanksgiving flavors of the stuffing. I decided to add cranberries to my store-bought honey barbeque sauce. I can remember my mom adding grape jelly to barbeque sauce when she made cocktail wieners for holidays and parties when I was a kid. They were ALWAYS a hit. My thoughts went like this; cranberry sauce is a little like grape jelly in sweetness and jelly consistency, cranberry sauce is as much of a Thanksgiving staple as stuffing is, cranberry barbeque sauce and sage stuffing meatballs makes complete sense!

I think these meatballs were good enough to be added to the annual tradition roster. The cranberries gave the sauce just the right about of tartness but didn’t over power the tender, savory meatballs! We all ate so many meatballs and cheesy bean dip that we barely had room for the soup in the slow cooker (and tortellini that we cooked separately on the stove top this time).

 Holiday Cocktail Meatballs

For the Meatballs

3 lbs ground beef

1 lb pork sausage

About 3 cups cooked sage stuffing

3 eggs

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

2 Tbsp low sodium soy sauce

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp dried thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 4 baking sheets.

In the largest bowl you can find, combine all ingredients. Scoop roughly 2 Tbsp for each meatball and roll into balls. Place meatballs on baking sheets about 1 inch apart so they have a chance to brown in the oven.

Bake for 30-40 minutes. Allow meatballs to cool on pan at least 10 minutes before transferring to vessel with sauce.

For the Sauce

3 cups honey barbeque sauce

3 cup fresh cranberries

1 1/2 cup apple juice

Place all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth. Pour over cooked meatballs and simmer until sauce thickens slightly (about 5-7 minutes). Serve warm.

*Meatballs freeze well in case you are not trying to feed an army. And sauce can easily be reduce to 1/3 of the amount written.