This is actually more about memories than meatballs because I’m not ready to share this current recipe since we won’t actually be eating it until tonight. Friends are coming to dinner, and I made the sauce yesterday to go with Frank’s homemade pasta.

It’s a family recipe (not our family!) for Sunday gravy with meatballs and sausages. It required a number of steps, and hours of cooking with the meat in the sauce for the entire time. Curious to see how this sauce rates with tonight’s friends who are used to our regular “house sauce.”

This may be the last pasta dinner of the season. The weather is luring us outward. The deck will soon be our dining room of choice, and the grill our preferred cooktop. But back to memories.

As I was forming the meatballs, I was smiling, thinking about Frank’s mother. Her meatballs were all different sizes. Frank said that she started out small and ended up huge because she got bored with the process and wanted to speed things up!

Then I remembered visiting a teacher friend a number of years ago. When I walked into her kitchen, her husband was sitting at the table forming meatballs with an ice cream scoop. The vivid memory resulted in two things. I dug out my scoop and ended up with uniform meatballs. And I called my friend. I hadn’t spoken to her in years, and it was wonderful to hear her voice and share memories.

All because of a new recipe for meatballs!