Spaghetti with Meat Balls: or how to hide veggies without even trying, my recipe

Ingredients
2 onions
2 carrots
2 celery sticks
1 lb lean ground beef, appx
1 egg
breadcrumbs (optional)
2 cans diced tomatoes, no salt added
1 jar tomato sauce
garlic
My herbs of choice: parsely, basil, oregano, cumin, turmeric, black pepper
Spaghetti

Supplies
knife and cutting board
blender
2 pots: 1 for the spaghetti, 1 for the meatballs (if you cook the spaghetti 1st and set it aside, you can get away with just 1 pan)
colander (for straining the spaghetti, you can use the pot lid if you don't have one.  Just be careful of steam burns.)
jar or garbage container of some kind

Dice onions, carrots, celery. In a blender, puree 1 onion, the carrots and the celery.

Mix the pureed veggies, meat, and egg in a bowl.

Add breadcrumbs to the bowl.  The point of the breadcrumbs is to help bind it all together by keeping it from being too moist, but if you don't have that, just treat them more gently.  I usually start mixing the meat, and have my hubby shake some in, and decide how much by feel--not too dry, still moist, but holding together a bit.

Once mixed, roll the meat into little balls, about 1" diameter.

Heat a pot and add meatballs gently, one at a time.

Keep adding meatballs, rolling the already cooking ones to one side so they brown all over and to make room for the new ones.

Carefully pour off the fat that is cooking off the meatballs into your throwaway jar or container.  I didn't have one, so I poured it into a bowl until it cooled enough for the trashbag.

The meatballs don't have to be fully cooked, just gently browned.  They're going to simmer in sauce later to get fully cooked.
Add the remaining diced onion to the meatballs to soak up the fat that is left in the pan.

When they begin to soften, add the two cans of diced tomatoes with their juice.

Add the whole jar of sauce.  Sometimes I save the jar in the fridge, wait until the pasta is cooked, and pour about 1/4 c of the pasta water in the jar to pick up ALL the rest of the sauce in there, and pour it into the cooking sauce to thin it.

Stir very gently so as not to break up the meatballs.

Cover, bring to a boil, then simmer on low for about an hour or until you're hungry, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing is sticking to the pan and burning. 

Add spices to taste soon before serving, so they don't lose their potency in the long simmer.  You can thin the sauce out if you need to be frugal and stretch this meal out, the meaty taste really permeates to make it feel richer than it is.
Serve with cooked spaghetti.

This dish freezes really well, with or without the spaghetti, so you can make a big pot of it on the weekend, freeze in individual containers, and have an instant and healthy meal on a night when you don't feel like cooking.