Best of the season to everyone. I wish for us all in the coming year good health, good art, good food, good sex, and good times with loved ones. And a pox on any and all assholes who deceive and destroy!

My gift to you this year is a recipe, both practical and delicious:

RECESSION BALLS

BALLS
Lean, ground beef**, or veggie substitute (Yves veggie ground) 500 grams or so
One cup coarse bread crumbs (if chunks are big, soak them in some water)
One package frozen spinach
One can chick peas
Half an onion
Four cloves of garlic
Handful of basil, chopped
One tbsp Dried thyme
2 eggs
2 shredded carrots
salt and pepper to taste
(**try to make it free range if you can- the meal on the whole will still be dirt cheap. Just because we're poor, doesn't mean we have to stop caring how farm animals live and die)

GRAVY
I just used a Knorr Hunter's sauce mix, and added chopped mushrooms and a half a cup of port, and found it was a brilliant lubricant for the recession balls.
If you are ambitious enough to make your gravy from scratch, good for you, but the balls don't leave anything in the way of fat or drippings, so you will need to buy some stock to get things going.

Mix all ingredients for balls together well in a large bowl. Proceed to form balls approx. one inch in diameter. I would suggest making them no larger, as they become difficult to flip in the pan while cooking- they're far easier to flip the smaller they are.
Fry balls in a pan using olive oil, butter, or Earth Harvest butter substitute. They get brownest in butter (jesus, I love butter!). Whatever you use, make sure the pan is good and hot before putting in the balls. Cook approx. 5 minutes or until brown on one side. Flip them over and brown the other side. Add two tablespoons of water and cover for a few minutes. Let water evaporate, turn the heat down and add some port, cooking at low heat for another three minutes.
Transfer all balls into a roasting pan, add gravy, cover with foil, and bake in oven for fifteen/twenty minutes, making sure the balls are cooked through entirely.

Serve with TRI-COLOUR PASTA and SALAD.

All told, and this factors in a bag of pasta and some salad greens, the total cost is about $16 ($12 if vegetarian) and the recipe makes 32 one inch in diameter balls!
4 balls makes a hefty meal
That's four two-person meals (assuming you are eating with a friend, relative, or lover).
That's $2 per person, per meal!

**regarding the PORT- yes, it is $15 and technically throws off the budget. It's not essential to the recipe, but assuming you don't drink it straight, a bottle of cooking port can flavour a couple of dozen meals and is a worthwhile investment, like a good knife or funky oven mitt. Plus, the very fact you can think to yourself or say to your friends, 'It's a recession and I'm cooking with port', is pretty neat, and less reckless than throwing a trip to Cancun on your credit card in an attempt to prove you can beat the bust by pretending it ain't broke.
**thanks to Eileen Curtis of Vancouver for hooking me on cooking with port. Your adage 'Steal from Peter to pay Paul' is an inspiration.

If things out there in the world of finance tank even more, update the recipe and make them 'depression balls', by adding twice as many bread crumbs, those lentils way in the back of the cupboard you never use, or some organic lawn cuttings.

Enjoy
Love, Kris