Spaghetti with Veggie Balls and Garlic Bread *Edit + Meatball Sub from leftovers!

Is anyone else counting down the days to spring like me?  T minus 61 days!  I have to say it's days like today that get me through winter.  The sun was out and shining!  It was still cold...but not so bad!  I wanted something easy tonight and spaghetti is always that and always a fav in our house.  I haven't ventured to make my own spaghetti sauce.  I'm sure its probably easy and better than the jar stuff  but I just haven't had the desire.  You can find some good sauces in the jar and when I make spaghetti it's usually on days like today that I don't want to put a lot of effort into it.  One of these days. 

I bought some Gimme Lean ground beef style veggie meat.  I was just going to crumble it up in the spaghetti but I had an idea to make them into meatballs.  The meat is very "sticky" so it worked really well.  I put the whole package in a bowl with about 1/4 cup of bread crumbs and some seasoning (italian seasoning, crushed red peppers, and a little paprika).  I molded them into about 1/2 inch thuick. 

1/2 of the Formed meatballs uncooked

I heated the oven with some olive oil and browned the meatballs 1/2 of the batch at a time.  Once they were all browned I took them out of the pot and added some chopped onions and garlic. 

Meatballs cooking

 Meatballs cooked

Then I added a jar of sauce and let that simmer on low.  Then I cooked the spaghetti.  I know I've talked about the pasta boat before so I thought I'd take a picture of mine.  Super easy to use. 

I found this super cool recipe on the vegweb iPhone app for a garlic spread.  I made this while cooking the spaghetti.  You take a whole bulb of garlic and cut the top off.  Wrap in foil and bake in the oven for about 30-40 minutes (I baked at about 250, but the recipe called for less temp and less time, but I found mine wasn't done in that time).  Then take out of the oven and press the end of the bulb to push all of the cloves out into a small bowl (I'm amused easily and found this quite fun!).  Mix with equal amount of butter and your fav. seasonings.  You'll want to use a fork for this so you can mash the garlic into a "paste".  Toast some bread and spread with the garlic mixture.  Really good.  If you don't like garlic you won't like it.  Then again why would you be making garlic bread?  lol, I LOVE garlic and can eat whole cloves by themself so I find this very tasty! 

Make sure not to burn yourself when handling the garlic

Once the sauce is pretty much done cooking I added the meatballs back to the sauce so they can warm up.  When the pasta is done cooking mix with the sauce and meatballs, and if you are feeling fancy top with some vegan parma!  This turned out really well.  I was surprisingly impressed with the meatballs.  I didn't have much hope for them but they turned out really good.  Husband said they tasted just like real meat.  You still get the slight after taste but not like some fake meats that tastes bad...this tasted good just the after taste gave it away that it wasn't real meat.  If that makes sense?  This recipe will make for good leftovers too. 


**Edit -- So I made some GREAT meatball sandwich with the leftovers for lunch.  SOOO yummy!  I toasted a bun.  Heated the garlic spread in the microwave for a few seconds, spread on the bun.  Heated a few meatballs and sauce with some daiya cheese on top.  Put on the bun with some hot sauce...Perfection!! 

Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler!