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"While contemplating smothering something (probably eggs) in the bottle of marinara languishing in my refrigerator, I asked the household&amp;#039;s advice. Baby had no comment, but my son had a wonderful suggestion: &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#039;t you make some meatballs, and we&amp;#039;ll eat them with the sauce and some pasta.&amp;quot;  I love it when my son takes an interest in meal planning. And while spaghetti and meatballs is not an earth-shattering idea, it&amp;#039;s new coming from him. His usual request is pasta with Parmesan, followed closely by macaroni and cheese from a box (gosh, the kid eats a lot of starch!). After a bumpy takeoff being on our own, he&amp;#039;s really adjusted. So these meatballs were a pleasure to make especially for him.  I used this recipe from Alton Brown, tweaking it here and there to accommodate what I had on hand, but trying his novel approach to oven-baking them: mini muffin pans. Cleaning the pan after baking the first batch wasn&amp;#039;t easy, so I used nonstick spray on the pan for the second batch and that made it a bit easier. Still, kind of messy. I mixed 1 1/2 pounds ground beef with 5 ounces thawed and squeezed frozen spinach, 1/2 cup grated Parmesan, 1/4 cup bread crumbs, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, 1 tablespoon dried oregano and 1 egg. I don&amp;#039;t have a scale, so I used a 2-tablespoon spring-loaded scoop to measure out meatballs. Put 1 in each mini muffin cup, then baked at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. I baked them early in the day, while my son was at school and the baby was napping, and warmed them in marinara before serving.  Meatballs were easier to make than I thought. Below, a few variations:  Spaghetti with Meatballs Curried Meatballs with Yogurt Sauce Pork Albondigas \u2014 Kim Walker "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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