Red Sauce and Turkey Meatballs

Today I made some wonderful red sauce vegan style. It had all the good stuff in it. Fresh herbs, dried herbs, spices and lots of garlic and some pureed veggies. It was quite tasty. I have been making that sauce for a few years now. The interesting thing was the turkey meatballs. I have never used turkey for meatballs before. I love the beef /pork/lamb meatballs. This time I used ground turkey and did roughly the same thing as I usually would. They were great. The kids ate them, Janine liked them and all in all it was good.

Zesty Vegan Red Sauce

1 gallon of tomato sauce ( I get the Contadina brand from Sam's Club for like 3 bucks a gallon)
1 large onion
10 garlic cloves
1 red pepper
2 cups of fresh parsley
1 cup of fresh basil
2 tablespoons of oregano
1/3 cup of sugar (you may want more the sauce can be a little bit acidic)
3 tablespoons really good Balsamic Vinegar
2 cups of water
1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp of cayenne pepper
1 tbl of smoked paprika

Puree the veggies and fresh herbs with the garlic.
Heat olive oil in a large sauce pan and ad the puree.
I let this cook and bubble for about 10 minutes stirring frequently to keep it from burning ( the liquid evaporates quickly)
Add the tomato sauce and let it simmer for about 1 hour or so. You want to make sure that it cooks for a while otherwise the onion and the garlic will be really y sharp.
Add the spices and balsamic when you add the sauce. Sugar to taste. Oh and don't forget the salt. Salt to taste.

Turkey Meatballs

3lbs of ground turkey
1 cup of bread crumbs
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
1 tsp dried oregano
6 cloves of garlic chopped fine
1 egg
1 tbsp basil paste

Mix in large bowl all of the ingredients. Add the egg last. Be sure to salt and pepper. roll out small meatballs about 2 inches in size. place on a cookie sheet that has aluminum foil that has been sprayed with non-stick spray. ( I like Pam) put in a 375 pre-heated oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes take the cookie sheets out and turn each meatball over. Put back in for another 20 minutes.

This will feed a ton of people too. We had guests over so there were 6 kids and 3 adults. We were all satisfied. Prob could have used more pasta but oh well.

You can freeze the sauce and meatballs FYI. Take 'em out in the morning and warm up a quick meal one night next week or so.

The sauce in the picture was made with pork spare ribs.  I didn't have a pic from today to post.