"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs"

Aside from being one of my kids’ favorite books, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs , by Judi and Ron Barrett (1978) has also inspired the love of all things meatball in my family. Let’s just take a minute to discuss the spaghetti and/or meatball experience from my youth. Our spaghetti never included meatballs. Generally we had a sort of ragu type sauce with browned ground beef and some seasonings stirred together with Prego brand spaghetti sauce (Ragu brand was too watery, if I remember correctly). As a child, I wasn’t a big lover of spaghetti sauce, preferring my noodles plain. In time, however, I managed to ladle a bit of the sauce onto my noodles. It was not my favorite meal in the world. Strange, I know. Especially after seeing how ravenously my own children devour this staple meal. Who knows why…maybe I was just picky or maybe my mom ate too much of it while I was merely a bun in the oven (she has confessed this was her main craving with me!). Meatballs, on the other hand, were a family favorite. They never came in the Italian variety, though. We made barbecue meatballs–meatballs covered in BBQ sauce and baked, served over egg noodles most of the time. I used to make up a bunch of these and stick them in the freezer when we were newlyweds. But after a…

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"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs"