Meatball Soup

Every recipe has a story and every memory a taste. It was back in the day in the late 60's when my twin brother hopped a train in Mpls, Mn and rode it out to Seattle in a cadillac.

My brother Jim had worked briefly for Burlington Northern Railway via our good friend Ira. He did not last.Ira did, and retired from the railroad just last year after 30 plus years of employment.

Jim never lasted any where not even on this earth, but he lasted long enough at BN to learn the ins and outs of hopping trains. Cars were stacked two deep on flatcar after flatcar and Jim chose the upper level. He turned on the tunes in that Cadillac and laid back and listened to Jim Morrison and the Door's "Light My Fire," the long version, and Cream, and Strawberry Fields and more as the big farmland of Mn and eastern ND became the exquisite endless prairie and high plateau of western ND and eastern Montana. And then the mountains. Wow. It was the trip of a lifetime. He ate venison summer sausage and drank cokes.

Pheasant first and whitetail deer and then antelope and mule deer and then all over again depending on the terrain as he rode that Cadillac. He thought of hunting with his brother and his Dad and how he got his first whitetail on ancestral property in N Mn in Gowan and how he had to gut and drag it out by himself because his twin was so inspired and motivated to get one too from the same tree that he never thought to help his brother.

He shot others too after falling asleep in a tree and waking to the snap of a twig or because he was usually in the right place at the right time, magically. His twin was a student of the woods and the whitetail but it took him several years to get his first. He tried too hard. Jim took it as it came; he let the woods and the deer come to him.

If you have leftover meatballs you can make them into meatball soup. Saute' equal amounts of onions,carrots, celery and cabbage in olive or veg oil till half done, add enough flour to absorb the oil,add garlic, Herbs de Provence, bayleaf, red wine, water, and a bouillion cube or two to taste( beef) and a little worcestershire, and red pepper to taste. Add precooked swedish or any meatballs and simmer till vegetebles are tender and meatballs are hot.

Serve as is or over mashed potatoes.

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