Meatballs

Time had come for the last tomatoes ripening on my kitchen windowsill. All of them far from pageant winners, sauce came to mind. I cooked down those roughly chopped tomatoes with 3/4 cup of wine (I usually prefer red but we had white open and waiting), 1 cup of olive oil, 8 smashed cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, oregano, dried parsley, chile flakes, dried basil ( could had eased fresh but out's cold up here and the plants are long gone), and 4 bay leaves. Mashing the tomatoes a little the mixture simmered for nearly 2 hours. Taking the lazy girl's way out -- instead of peeling the tomatoes at the beginning or passing through a food mill at the end -- I gave the whole melange a turn in the vitamix and -- presto! smooth sauce. This is the recipe I use when canning sauce to use through the year in quick dishes and other recipes, my basic sauce. Probably due to sad end of year tomatoes and maybe the white wine, the sauce was a bit more acidic then usual, so today I warmed the sauce with a bit of whole milk (about 1 cup leftover in the fridge) and dropped in simple panfried meatballs (ground beef, ground pork, chopped onion, chopped garlic, 2 eggs, gluten free bread crumbs, dried parsley, oregano, tiny bit of grated parmesan) to cook through in the savory goodness.
Despite the one day biscuit and pie vacation for Thanksgiving we are still in the midst of our gluten free experiment around here so these meatballs topped a bowl of beautiful steamed Romanesco cauliflower.