"You're making what?"

That's what I said to my mom last year when she brought out all the ingredients she'd bought to make meatballs at the Princess's birthday party.

"Yuck! Don't poison my guests!"

"Stop being ridiculous. I read this in a magazine, I'm sure it will be delicious!"

"You've never made it? You're EXPERIMENTING on my friends?!"

"Yes. Now go away."

"This is my kitchen!"

"And I'm your mother. Go."

I went. And, as always, she was right. They were delicious. My 5 year old niece told my brother to get the recipe. And I surrepetitiously ate every remaining meatball (not that there were many!) after everyone had gone home.

And you can make it in the slow cooker, so this has now become a favourite recipe for nights when the Princess has dancing or swimming. And, because I love you, here it is.

Badness's Mom's Fabulous Sweet and Spicy Meatballs

One can JELLIED cranberry sauce (the kind with no pieces of fruit)
One jar salsa (medium or hot)
frozen italian meatballs

Put the cranberry jelly and salsa in the slow cooker. Break up the jelly a bit with a wooden spoon and stir it around a bit. If you're short on time you can heat it up in a saucepan first. Add the meatballs. Cook. Eat.

If you cook it on high, this only takes a couple hours, in fact, you can do it in half an hour in a saucepan on the stove. But it gets better the longer it simmers, so you can throw it in on low in the morning and let it simmer all day. This makes enough sauce for 50-60 meatballs if you're doing it for a party, but if I'm doing it for us I cook about 20 meatballs and then I put the leftover sauce in the freezer and use it for one more meal. (And a note on the salsa, use the cooked kind, I usually just buy the store brand for this, the jar I used last night was 650ml.)

You can serve this with pasta (my kids fave), or rice, or just fresh bread and salad (my fave).
Bad ate 5 last night. I was dreaming of leftovers for lunch, but Hubs ate them. Typical.