Spaghetti With Vegetables and Meatballs

As part of my ongoing effort to save money on groceries plus feed my family good real food, we ate spaghetti with vegetables and meatballs for dinner. The vegetables were again courtesy of my grocery-gleaning neighbor, the pasta was from the pantry and the meatballs were Trader Joe’s turkey version.

I sauteed the chopped onions, green and yellow peppers, zucchini and tomatoes in olive oil until they started to soften; added salt, pepper, garlic powder and dried basil and waited until the tomatoes gave up some of their juice, and added the meatballs to heat through. Then served the sauce and meatballs over cooked pasta and topped it off with fresh grated Parmesan This was a fun dinner because the kids helped me chop the veggies using butter knives – I think they eat better at dinner when they’ve helped make it.