Italian Wedding Soup

(The last half-eaten bowl of soup-- more delicious than it looks.)

Before I type the recipe, here's an extra paragraph in case you haven't made bone broth before.

Homemade bone broth is the base for almost all of our soups these days, and it turns a good soup into an extraordinary one, with minimal effort.

First of all, SAVE THE BONES. ALWAYS.
After a meal, we just throw the bones in a ziplock bag and store them in the freezer until needed.

To make poultry bone broth, take a turkey carcass, a roast chicken carcass, or any combination of bones thereof and place in a crockpot. Add an onion, quartered, about 6 cloves garlic (split), a stalk of celery cut into chunks, a carrot or two, cut into big chunks, half a dozen peppercorns, a couple of teaspoons of salt, and a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (this will help the bones break down more easily so you can get all the goodness of that marrow). Add about a gallon of water (I usually just fill to top of crockpot) and simmer on low heat for about 24 hours. Strain into a bowl for use.

*I also now make bone broth in our instant pot when I forget to do it the day before and am feeling time's pinch. It only takes a couple of hours in the instant pot, but when I remember, I prefer using the crockpot.

ITALIAN WEDDING SOUP

This is a sloppy "recipe," as it's basically my notes to Susannah typed word-for-word. I can always come back on here later and type it up in proper recipe form.
A couple of notes: 
1. The ingredients are in bold
2. These amounts are general. As I told Susannah, throw in whatever you want! You can't ruin it!
3. If you don't have a huge stockpot and want to fit this soup in a normal pot, cut it all in half. This fed 11 Owen people for supper with leftovers for the next day's lunch.

One gallon+ of turkey or chicken bone broth (or store-bought chicken stock, though it will cost more and taste less) for the soup's base.

For the meatballs:

2-3 pounds ground turkey (could use pork or beef)
1 and a half pounds sweet Italian sausage
1 cup dry bread crumbs (ours are plain homemade ones; if you're using storebought seasoned, keep that in mind when you shake in the dried seasonings at the end.)
3 eggs
1/2 grated Parmesan cheese
1 large onion, finely minced (we used food processor to turn it to mush)
6 plump cloves garlic (turned to mush with the onion)
1 tsp. salt
a couple of shakes each of dried sage, rosemary, thyme, and basil

Mix all these together by hand in a bowl. Shape into smallish meatballs and bake on tinfoil-lined, rimmed baking sheets for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees, or until cooked through.

Slice 5-6 carrots into coins and set aside.
Thaw 1-2 bags of frozen spinach (we used two 12 oz. bags) and squeeze out excess liquid. In the summer, use fresh!

Meanwhile, sauté about one-two cups chopped celery and one large onion in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and butter until softened. Add the celery mixture to the bone broth, add the sliced carrots, and cook until carrots are almost soft. Add 12 oz. small-shaped pasta (acini de pepe is standard, but we just used egg noodles broken in pieces) and spinach and cook until the pasta is al dente. Add the meatballs, add additional salt and pepper (and garlic powder, rosemary, thyme, and basil), to taste, if needed, serve, and slurp.