Venison Meatballs and Tomato Sauce

Last night, we had venison meatballs for dinner, simmered in tomato sauce. As part of our wedding diet plan, we're limiting our refined carbohydrate intake, so that means no pasta (or at least not very often).

The venison came from my first deer, shot within the first half hour of deer hunting season in November of 2009. We had quite a bit of ground meat from the deer, so we haven't had to buy any ground beef in quite some time. We've actually found that beef tastes a little weird now that we've been eating so much venison.

Anyway, we made the meatballs with venison, onion powder, garlic powder, and some "Miracle Blend" (a spice mixture from Northern Michigan). These were browned on all sides with a little olive oil.

While the meatballs were browning, I started the sauce. While I prefer to use fresh tomatoes, it just isn't the season for that. Usually, I would use canned whole tomatoes and seed them myself, but my mom sent a few cans of ground tomatoes home with us after Christmas. She said they were sweeter than she liked, but since I wanted to have dinner ready when Katey got home from town, I figured that would work in my favor. I only planned to simmer the sauce for about 30-45 minutes. So, I used two cans of the ground tomatoes, and one small can of diced Italian-style tomatoes, and seasoned it with onion powder, garlic powder, two bay leaves, a dash of pepper flakes, and basil.

Once the sauce was simmering, I dropped the browned meatballs into the sauce to finish cooking. We topped the meatballs with a little shredded mozzarella and some grated pecorino romano cheese, and served it alongside a spinach salad with dried cranberries and walnuts, dressed with homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

It was a decent meal. I think Katey missed the pasta a little more than I did, but it wasn't too bad. We both agreed that the meatballs might have benefited from the addition of some Italian sausage mixed into the venison.

We have some sauce left over, but no more meatballs. We might saute' some chicken and top it with the sauce at some point next week.