It's not green. I'm not Irish.

I'm not Italian either, but that's beside the point.

This week's recipe isn't all my own. On Sunday, I made a pretty fabulous meal for my family. We had homemade meatballs with homemade sauce, linguini, and fresh steamed green beans. Oh, did I mention the homemade italian bread? Out of all of those things, the only one that was my original creation was the meatballs.

I am going to list everything in the order I made it. The theory is that if you make it the way I did, you will have a delicious meal for six and it will all be ready at the same time. If I tell you how long this meal took to prepare, will it deter you from making it? The bread dough can be made up to six hours ahead of time and left to rise in the refrigerator. Remember, people!! This is therapy for me.

Make the bread first. I found a terrific Italian bread recipe on recipezaar.com . I think I only used about 4 1/2 cups flour. I made 9 individual-sized loaves, so they took slightly less time to bake.

Next, make the sauce. I found a website that makes me want to make more Italian food than just spaghetti and meatballs. You might have to navigate yourself to the recipe, but it's easy to find. Left side of page, click recipes. Scroll down to sauces. The first recipe is 5-minute sauce. I used whole canned tomatoes and pulverized them in the blender. My kids don't like chunks in their sauce. I also substituted 1 tbs. dried basil for the 3 tbs. fresh. Also, I cooked this on low for at least an hour, so it was thicker than it would have been if I had only cooked it for five minutes.

Now, go shape the bread into loaves and let rise in a warm place.

Next, it's time for the meatballs.

• 1-2 lbs. lean ground beef (I used 93/7)



• 1 palmful oatmeal



• 10 ritz crackers



• 1 egg



• salt



• pepper



• 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce (you know, the stuff that you are cooking on your stove now)



• 1 heaping tbs. good italian seasoning (I have this stuff I bought at the MOM in Jessup. It smells like Italy in a bottle.)

1. Heat 3 tbs oil in a large heavy-bottomed pan on medium/high heat.



2. Shape mixture into balls. I don't measure this. Just grab some meat. Shape it into a ball. It should look big enough to take about two to three bites out of it. Make sure to pack it together, otherwise it may fall apart.



3. As you make the meatballs, put them in the pan. Start turning them after you put the last one in the pan.



4. Keep turning them until they are completely cooked.
   


5. Set aside

Put bread loaves in oven and finish baking them according to what the recipe tells you to do.

Start a huge pot of water to boil for pasta. Put meatballs into sauce. Remember, they are already cooked. You are just warming them at this point.

Now you'll start your green beans. When I say start, I mean take them out of the fridge and start cleaning them. You should have them all ready to steam by the time the pasta is ready to be put into the pot.

Cook 1 pound of pasta. I used linguini because I had that on hand. Use whatever noodle you want. Brush egg wash on bread for last 5 minutes of cook time. (you forgot, didn't you?)

Drain pasta when done. Put it on a large serving dish. Pour meatballs and sauce over noodles. Toss lightly. The bread should be done. The veggies are done. Put it all on the table and eat.

Buon apetito!