Italian Wedding Soup

It's a perfect day for soup. It's Lent, it's gloomy and rainy. Well we're having thunderstorms, which I actually love. In fact, I would be very happy if the only weather we had was sunny and thunderstorms. For me, thunder and lightning makes gloomy and rainy days less, well, gloomy. haha! Anyway, I wanted to share with you my easy version of Italian wedding soup. I LOVE Italian wedding soup. Now, I will be completely honest with you. I have no idea if this recipe is authentic tasting or not. I'm not even sure if Italian wedding soup is really authentically Italian. I'm Chinese, so I have no idea what authentic Italian food really is. This soup is yummy though so I though I'd share it with you on this rainy day.

Ingredients:

Meatballs:

2 lbs ground meat (lean beef, chicken, turkey or pork or any combination)

1 cup seasoned bread crumbs

1 egg beaten

dash of garlic powder, onion powder, basil. (I don't really measure much when it comes to spices... really you probably don't need much anyway if you're using seasoned bread crumbs).

Soup:

42 oz chicken broth (I use Swanson all natural or College Hill's Light- whichever Walmart has at the time...)

~ 3/4qt water (I don't do much measuring... did I say that already?)

1 package of frozen spinach (or whatever you have. I'm using a combination of spinach and kale- chopped)

1 can diced tomatoes, Italian style (if you don't have Italian style- just add some Italian spices- I'm doing this today)

1 1/2-2 cups orzo pasta cooked and drained.

Directions:

1) Mix meatball ingredients together until combined. I use my hands to really work it all together. As a complete side note, you can also make meatballs with ground lentils (in the food processor) instead of breadcrumbs if you can't tolerate breadcrumbs or for whatever reason (eg. paleo/primal diet).  

2) Make mini meatballs. The size of marbles- or a little bigger, if you're lazy like me. Well, no, not lazy, short on time is a better way to put it.

3) Boil water and add enough broth to boil the meatballs. Add a dash of garlic powder and onion powder. Now if you want to do this step in a more tasty way, heat up a tablespoon of olive oil and then brown the meatballs first before adding the water and broth. This would make the soup even tastier... but I didn't do this today.

4) Boil meatballs until cooked (maybe 20mins?)

5) Add the remaining broth, tomatoes and spinach. Bring to a boil. Simmer on low for some time (time equals until my husband gets home and we can eat. LOL). Add orzo to pot shortly before serving (for me this is when I hear the garage door open and the orzo/soup will be hot by the time we all sit down).
6) Optional- this would be super awesome topped with some freshly grated romano or parmesan cheese. 

I hope you enjoy this recipe. I love this soup. It's pretty simple to make, in my opinion. I love to make/serve soups in general because I feel like they go a long way and are overall not too expensive.