For me, fall signals the return of meatballs

For Me, Fall Signals the Return of Meatballs

The return of meatballs to my apartment signals the end of summer. Now that it's fall, the heat from the oven is pleasing. The smell of these meatballs cooking in a pot of sauce is simply comforting.

For me, October is all about list making, hunkering, and planning. This year the goal is to make life simpler. This starts with our food. During the week, success and simplicity are one and the same. For breakfast my daughter and I down green drinks, yogurt, or the granola I made last weekend. For lunch, between Zoom meetings, we munch vegetables whole: red peppers, juicy cucumbers, snappy green beans, and crunchy carrots, crisp romaine with cashews or hummus, and bites of cheese. Most weekdays, dinner is literally whatever takes the least amount of time, makes the fewest dishes, and yet still "seems like dinner". A big batch of weekend meatballs helps.

Meatballs on leftover takeout rice with crock pot zucchini hit the spot. Baked salmon in the toaster oven, a microwaved crown of broccoli with olive oil and parm, and mashed potatoes that may or may not be made from potato flakes. One particularly freeing, short-term approach I've adopted is to forget the idea of 3 square meals a day. Instead, I try to eat all of the food groups sometime before bed. Now that it's fall we have so many apple choices for breakfast, and we might not even have a vegetable with dinner.

On weekends we are able to cook for fun and use what we cook to keep weeknight simple. This is where the meatballs come in. This summer my daughter grew into a really good savory cook taking online classes. As I watched her learn in these classes, I came to see that the wall between a delicious dinner and frustrating mom/teen power struggle is made out of mise en place and plenty of time. I let go of all of my ideas of perfection and leaned into just being together. I let the meatballs be different sizes. I say nothing when she puts 3 different shapes of pasta in the same pot. And we didn't worry too much when we realized we had run out of parm (hi, cheddar). She loaded up our plates and before she set them on the counter she asked me to do the dishes later, and of course I did.

- Heather Ramsdell
Editorial Director, The Spruce Eats