Cooking with Quills?

As a small child, my son was a picky eater. He would eat grilled cheese sandwiches, plain hamburgers, the marshmallows out of Lucky Charms, and tacos. And getting him to eat tacos required absolute dishonesty on the part of his father and me. We told him the lettuce on the crunchy tacos at Taco Bell was Mexican grass. For some reason, that appealed enough to him to get him to eat them.

Though we later divorced, his father and I went on to coauthor the bestselling Lying to Your Children for Dummies.

Eventually, my son became more tolerant of a variety of foods, though his love of tacos stayed with him into adulthood. As a teenager, he once ate 13 tacos at my dinner table. I had stopped telling him I used Mexican grass by that time. I had no interest then and have no interest now in knowing whether he was familiar with any other kind of Mexican grass at that point in his life (or ever). President Clinton didn’t invent “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Simply Cooking Simply recognizes that cooking for spouses is often as difficult as cooking for children – sometimes worse. But unless you’re a vegetarian, meatballs appeal to everyone.

Meatballs of all kinds. Swedish meatballs, Italian meatballs, sweet and sour meatballs – any time you mix ground meat with a egg and something to hold it all together, throw on a sauce, you have a comforting meal that will appeal to children and grownups alike.

Even as a small child, my son loved porcupine meatballs. I brought the recipe into my marriage from my mother’s recipe box. If you go on line, you can find all sorts of recipes for porcupine meatballs. Some are fancier than others. The recipe below is not fancy, and is exactly as my mother wrote it.

Porcupine Meatballs

1 beaten egg
1 can tomato soup
¼ cup uncooked rice*
2 T chopped onions*
1 T. snipped parsley*
½ t. salt
¼ t. pepper
1 lb. ground beef
½ c. water
1 t. Worchestershire sauce

In bowl, combine the egg and ¼ c. of the soup. Stir in the uncooked rice, onion, parsley, salt and pepper. Add ground beef. Mix well.

Shape into small meatballs, and place in a 10-in. skillet. (At this point, my mother never says whether or not she browned the meatballs. I do.)

Mix remaining soup with water and Worchestershire sauce; pour over meatballs. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer 35 – 40 minutes, stirring often.

Makes 4-5 servings.

* I’m pretty sure my mother used dried onion flakes. I always use about a half of a finely minced onion. Also, I don’t believe I ever saw a bunch of fresh parsley in my mother’s house, unless it was curly parsley that she put around a molded jello salad. So, again, I’m pretty sure she used dried parsley. I always use fresh. Finally, I think you can probably use either instant or regular rice. I always use regular.

Mashed potatoes are required with this dish. I don’t believe you would be breaking any major federal laws if you use noodles, but I’m pretty sure it’s a misdemeanor in most states!

As for the name, I understand the reasoning, but they never really looked much like porcupines to me.