Q and A: Meatballs in tomato sauce and limited garden space

Meatballs in tomato sauce

We love your book Growing and Canning Your Own Food but I evidently lack the imagination to come up with a use for the meatballs in tomato sauce except for use on pasta. Surely I am missing something here. The meatballs in mushroom sauce are awesome! All the rest are really good also. I spent almost an entire month just canning your recipes and this is the only one that I can not really say I just love.

Joyce Baum
Pattonsburg, Missouri

I use the meatballs in tomato sauce as a meatloaf substitute, baking them in a casserole, sometimes topped with grated cheese. I also make an awesome meatball submarine sandwich with them, heating the meatballs in sauce, then ladling them on toasted garlic bread and topping with grated cheese. You can also make a pretty good stew with them, boiling up your veggies first, until tender, then draining and adding the meatballs and tomato sauce. Or bake a spaghetti squash, cut it in half, pick out any seeds, fluff up the “strings,” then pour on the quart of meatballs in tomato sauce. Add grated cheese and bake on a cookie sheet at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until the cheese is just starting to get golden on the edges. I hope this will give you a few ideas. I want you to love ALL the recipes! — Jackie

Limited garden space

Dear Lady Jackie Clay; Needing especially to maximize nutrition and quantity, this due to living in town and having very limited veg. garden space . . . along with our 4’x8′ cold frame and a 4’x8′ hot bed, please advice your thoughts as to how best to accomplish that sought goal , ASSUMING THAT IT IS ATTAINABLE/DO-ABLE. This area, about 30 miles NNE of Chattanooga, TN, is zone 9. Although we now are experiencing some freezing weather, the desire is to do now what can be done utilizing the ‘frame’ and ‘bed’. Disabled, in our mid 70s, I, taking it ‘slow’, can manage . . . but maximizing veg. quantity and quality is obviously our major need as we have only minimal income, the purchasing power of which seems to be decreasing weekly.

James and Frances Wyatt
Cleveland, Tennessee

Have you considered adding a few containers here and there in your yard? Friends have a small yard in town yet manage to grow a lot of food, using free or cheap 5-gallon buckets, available at local groceries with bakeries. By drilling a few holes in the bottom for drainage, you instantly have containers for pole beans, tomatoes, peppers, and much more. Our friends line their driveway with buckets of tomatoes, buckets of peppers on their patio, and have pole beans lining their back walk. Your best bet with your cold frame and raised bed is to raise several crops a year, starting with cold season crops such as kale, broccoli, spinach, early cabbage, onions, etc. Then follow with warm season crops, such as beans, tomatoes, okra, etc. Trellis all crops you can. They take up so much less room that way. You can even trellis cucumbers, melons, and vining tomatoes. In this way they’ll only take up inches of your bed instead of feet, enabling you to grow much more food in a bed than you would have otherwise. Think hard about where you might be able to grow extra food. Do you have a patio, porch, or walkway where you might set a container to grow food? It doesn’t take much to grow a bunch of spinach, a pot of okra, a bush squash. Everything you can manage to grow is a plus for you. I even grow patio and hanging basket tomatoes and peppers right in the house and hanging from our house eaves during the summer. You can add a few shepherd’s hooks and grow these hanging basket vegetables right in your lawn, in place of flowers. You can also add flowers to the veggie baskets to make them look even prettier! All the best luck in your endeavor to become more self-reliant in your table food! — Jackie