Meatballs are an acceptable food in our house. I have one very picky child who deals with texture issues and one child who will eat anything that holds still long enough to put it in his mouth. Meatballs are acceptable by both. I consider that a food win. We’ve been hosting parties for various reasons over the past month and have a few more coming up. Mom Central clued me in to a fabulous recipe that makes either a great appetizer or, as we found out, a great, quick meal: Ultimate Party Meatballs.

Here’s the recipe.

• 1 14-ounce can Ocean Spray® Jellied Cranberry Sauce
• 1 12-ounce bottle Heinz® Chili Sauce
• 1 2-pound bag frozen, pre-cooked, cocktail-size meatballs

I know. It sounds weird, right? I mean, when I put the two together, it just doesn’t look right.

That said, I’ve been finding that jellied cranberry sauce shows up in really random recipes to give it a little extra flavor. I recently made one and so I trusted the recipe and continued to make these meatballs. Even though it looked… weird.

Directions for making the meatballs:

Combine sauces in a large saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring until smooth. Add meatballs. Cover and cook for 15 minutes or until meatballs are heated through, stirring occasionally.

Makes 30 appetizer servings.

Slow cooker Preparation: Place meatballs in a slow cooker. Combine sauces and pour over meatballs. Cover and cook 4 hours on HIGH.

Once the cranberry sauce is heated and melts into the sauce, it doesn’t look weird anymore. Trust me.

And trust me on this: they’re delicious. The sauce is sweet and tangy, closer to a sweet and sour sauce than a tomato sauce meatball kind of thing. That’s why they’re perfect for hor dourves. Throw a couple on a plate along with some crackers and cheese and you’ve got yourself an easy bunch of appetizers for your next get together. (Ahem. Christmas much?) I don’t have pictures of our last small party in which we served the meatball appetizers (in a fancy schmancy bowl!) because I was a little bit stressed with that party. Apologies.

We also found that they make great meatball sandwiches. While meatball sandwiches typically have a red, tomato sauce, we are in love with this recipe on a nice, soft hoagie roll. LittleBrother inhaled his sandwich. He didn’t set it down the whole time he was eating it. BigBrother ate most of it which is saying something! I wanted two but I kept it to one.

Any way you work it, appetizer or sammich (which is how you’d say it if you were originally from Pittsburgh), this recipe is a hit with adults and kids. I’ve already bought more stuff to make another batch for yet another get together next week. Yummy, yummy. There are some other great recipes over on the Ultimate Party Meatballs website. Go check it out.

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[Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Heinz and Ocean Spray and received the ingredients necessary to facilitate my review. In addition, Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.]

When Mom Central asked if I could review some Atkins products, I was immediately on board. We try to eat healthy but old recipes die hard. It’s sometimes difficult to change your brand when it comes to baking or cooking, especially for tried and true recipes. Thankfully Atkins’ site has a bunch of recipes to try out.

I also found that it’s not all that difficult to take a tried and true recipe of your own, use Atkins ingredients and make it a little more healthy. I did so with my own zucchini bread recipe. Not only did I use the Atkins all purpose baking mix but I also cut the sugar of the original recipe in half. I also figured that I’d add just a little more than the two cups of grated zucchini because, well, at the end of grating two zucchini, I had more than two cups. As such: extra zucchini.

I was uncertain how it would turn out. After all, instead of using flour, I was using a “baking mix.” I used my baking powder and soda but I was really afraid it wouldn’t rise. I am excited to tell you that it did, in fact, rise! In fact, take a look for yourself!

Beautiful, isn’t it?

But how does it taste? A little less sweet, of course, as I cut the sugar in half. But as I also sprinkled in some nutmeg, it really tasted just fine. Especially with the butter. (What? I’m not perfect at diets. Trust me!) I also made pancakes with the all purpose baking mix but there are no pictures as they disappeared too quickly to photograph!

Here’s my recipe for my Atkins All Purpose Baking Mix Zucchini Bread.

1 cup sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2(+) cups grated zucchini
3 cups Atkins All Purpose Baking Mix
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 cup raisins
Add some Nutmeg* to taste

*Note: I don’t use cinnamon because I am allergic to cinnamon. If you like cinnamon, consider substituting the nutmeg with cinnamon. Or adding both for an extra spice-tastic zucchini bread!

And here’s how you put it all together.

1. Grate your zucchini.

2. In a large bowl, combine your sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla. Once mixed together, add in your grated zucchini and mix that all together, too.

3. In a separate bowl, but still somewhat large, sift together your flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and ground ginger.

4. Slowly blend your dry ingredients into your wet zucchini mixture.

5. Pour the mixture into two greased 8×5 bread pans. Or, if you don’t bake much bread and you only have one pan, pour half of the mixture into the bread pan and cover the remaining mixture so you can cook it second.

6. Bake at 325 degrees for one hour. Remove pan. Let cool for approximately ten minutes and then remove the zucchini bread from the pan and place bread out to cool. If you’re like me, wash out and dry the pan and pour the rest of the mixture into the pan, place it in the oven and bake for an hour.

And, voila! Two loaves of yummy zucchini bread made with Atkins All Purpose Baking Mix.

And there’s good news for you! You can create your own Atkins recipe and enter it in their contest. There are a few different categories and quite a smorgasbord of winnings so go give it a look and enter! (If you win, let me know and I’ll make your creation!) But don’t enter my zucchini bread recipe. I just did!

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[I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Atkins and received samples to facilitate my candid review. In addition, Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.]