Cookbook Friday Features Porcupine Meatball Recipe

The old cookbook off of my shelf today is Southern Living's Our Best Recipes. It was published in 1970 by Oxmoor House, and it's ISBN is 70-140493. My feeling on Southern Living's series of cookbooks entitled Our Best is that they are "spot on"! A compilation of the best recipes submitted by their readers is sure to be a hit every time. People who like to cook, know that the most delicious and practical recipes often come from cooks who are at home cooking for their families. I really enjoy this cookbook. It's a keeper.
It starts out with cheese wafers and punch recipes and covers everything from main dishes to desserts. The fact that the dessert section begins with loads of recipes for homemade ice creams and sherbets sells me. Fresh Blackberry Sherbet on page 137 is on my to-do list.
This book has the fancy recipes, if you're into that. There's Roast Pheasant With Rice (p. 192) and Old English Prime Rib (p. 217). But, what I really like is that they furnish plenty of recipes for those of us who want something hot and delicious out of the oven at 6:30 that didn't cost us a lot of time and energy. One of these recipes was on page 208. A recipe for Porcupine Meatballs made me smile. My Mom used to make these when I was little. Since I was a little picky, ok, a lot picky, when it came to meat dishes, the fact that I liked these says something about this recipe. All other forms of meat got covered with ketchup and swallowed with minimal chewing. I think that the name was also a selling point to a 5 or 6 year-old. These meatballs would be great with mashed potatoes and fresh steamed green beans.

P.208 Porcupine Meatballs

1 lb. lean ground beef
1/4 C rice, uncooked
1 small onion, chopped
Salt and pepper
ketchup
1 (6-oz.) can tomato sauce

Mix ground beef, onion, salt and pepper. Add enough ketchup tomake mixture stick together. Make into balls the size of walnuts. Place in glass baking dish and pour tomato sauce over meat. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.