Italian Night (link to recipe)

For some reason I have been craving spaghetti and meatballs.  When I was flipping through my favorite vegetarian cookbook, Vegan on the Cheap by Robin Roberston, I was excited to find a recipe for "wheatballs."   A quick mental check of my supplies and I was pretty sure I had some combination of the ingredients needed to make these.

The recipe is reviewed here online so I am not going to type it out.  However, I will list the changes I made.

I started by soaking dried mushrooms from food storage and then draining them.  I squeezed some of the water out.  I did not add the tablespoon of water called for until I was sure I would need it.

Since I rarely buy canned beans I cooked mine from scratch in the pressure cooker.  I used dried herbs and seasonings only and  2 tbsp. of tomato sauce from my can that was going in my marinara sauce.  I used Braggs Liquid Aminos instead of soy sauce.  I used homemade bread crumbs (from my pinto bean bread heel that was left).  I pureed the beans and mushrooms, but did all the rest of the mixing by hand.

For the first time ever I actually got the exact amount from a recipe that it said it would make -- 28 wheatballs exactly.  (By the way, these would be good served as an appetizer with pizza sauce for dipping.)

Now the marinara sauce is in the Instant Pot slow cooking away.  I'll serve these with brown rice pasta and sauce. Garden salad will be our side and I'll probably make some garlic bread.

All served up!  My husband loved these.  He said they were well seasoned, had a great texture and tasted great.  I put about half of them in the freezer for another meal.

In keeping with my cook extra plan I cooked a few extra chickpeas for an experiment.  I've never frozen them before to have on hand.  Each bag has 2 cups and they've gone into the freezer.  I'll test one out next week and then the second the following week.  I also had about 3/4 of a cup left that I put in the refrigerator.