Quickie Confetti 'n' Meatballs

Sorry to run quickies two weekends in a row, but I unfortunately have to do things besides look through old cookbooks once in a while. I have a brand new influx of papers from my primary and job, and my secondary job that usually takes about 4 hours a week has kept me busy for 20+ hours this past week, so... yeah. This is gonna be another quickie. (At least I can transform those extra hours into more cookbooks later!)

Appropriately enough, I've chosen Better Homes and Gardens After Work Cook Book (1974, though mine is a third printing from 1975). To raise my overworked spirits, I picked the retro-est looking recipe I could:

Confetti Meatball Supper is a beauty: veggie-flecked rice ring filled with meatballs, a few artfully rolling away down the side. It's basking in its natural habitat: track lighting and a field of '70s houseplants. It's... it's indescribably beautiful.

And what is this baby made of? I'll bet you can guess (especially considering the caption gives away its canny secrets):

Canned cheese soup, "catsup," instant onion, and Worcestershire make a "gravy" for the canned meatballs.

The ring is instant rice with a can of mixed vegetables and some chopped canned pimiento. That's some very festive confetti. (Now I'm imagining throwing rice ring at the newlyweds after their wedding, and you can see why nobody ever invites me anywhere.)

I love that this is basically a dump-it-all-together, heat-it-up, and dump-it-back-out-onto-a-plate recipe, but it still goes to the trouble of quickly molding the rice into a little volcano and presenting it on a platter with a saucy caldera. Even though the recipe could be a real quickie, the cook puts in at least enough effort that everyone can pretend it's something special (until they taste it, anyway).

That's some real after-work love. Have more fun this weekend than I will!