Spaghetti and Bean Balls!

As I'm cooking through the Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook I am super impressed with Cathe Olson's knack for creating healthy meals at low cost and I've been surprised by how satisfying and flavorful they are.  Great job Cathe!

In her cookbook, she has a recipe for Bean Balls that can be made as straight bean balls, or she has adaptions for Italian or Swedish style bean balls.  I chose to make them Italian style and serve them up with spaghetti.  They were quick to whip together in the food processor and bake in about 20 minutes while the noodles boil. 

I adapted the recipe slightly because it wasn't turning out the way I thought it should, it could be because I was in a hurry and used a can of beans rather than measuring out precooked beans or it could be that my carrot was too big (it was massive), either way, the mixture seemed too dry and wasn't coming together as I thought it should, so I added an egg as a binder and that worked great. 

Mine flattened out a little on the bottom, but I wasn't going for pretty so it didn't matter to me.  That could have been because I added an egg?

As I simmered and stirred the baked bean balls in the spaghetti sauce some of them fell apart but most stayed whole.  I actually preferred them broken up when eating the spaghetti and will purposely break them up next time to make it more like the ground beef spaghetti I'm used to.

Super delicious and satisfying!