Having everyone over our place is a fairly regular occurrence. I always make our friends’ and family’s favorites but I also like to make something new. Don’t want it to get boring now.

One of the challenges of entertaining in a small space, though is making sure you don’t need a lot of ingredients to make a dish (limited cabinet and fridge space) and making sure the preparation isn’t too elaborate (1 pot or pan preferred).

Over the summer we went to our neighbor Nancy’s for a big Labor Day bash. She had these incredibly addictive little spicy meatballs. Bingo. There was my something new for this party.

But Nancy and her husband are in the restaurant biz. Those meatballs could be tough to recreate.

So I put in a call.

And Nancy let me in on the secret to the meatballs.

Yup. You see that correct. Grape jelly and heinz chili sauce. Pour into a pot and add in frozen meatballs. Yup. Frozen meatballs. Just regular old, unseasoned frozen meatballs. Let them simmer away in the grape jelly and chili sauce. I used 2 jars of each for 2 pounds of meatballs. Three ingredients. One pot.

Your guests will never be able to guess what’s in the sauce. And you will be one calm, cool and collected hostess!