Our entire household loves watching the Food Network. On occasion, something strikes our fancy and we try out the recipe, or something catches our eye and we make our own rendition.

The other night, while watching Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives (one of our fave shows around here) I saw a quick glimpse of a meatball sub and about salivated all over my laptop from hunger!

Now, before I go much further, I prefer to make my own pizza sauce and marinara sauces by hand. Unfortunately, measurements are not a thing when making the sauces so bare with me!

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds Italian sausage – depending how much spice you like will depend on what type of sausage you like. We used mild Italian sausage this night and it was too spicy for me. I think we’re going to try sweet Italian sausage next time or maybe a mixture of sweet and mild.
• 1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs
• 1 egg
• 3 garlic cloves – minced and pressed
• 1 can tomato sauce
• 1 small can tomato paste
• Seasonings – I used garlic powder, Italian seasoning, Oregano, and onion salt this particular night as this is what I had on hand
• Provolone cheese
• Parmesan cheese
• Hoagie or sub rolls

Meatballs:

1. Mix the Italian sausage, 1/4 cup bread crumbs, 1 egg, and 3 garlic cloves (minced and pressed). Mix well.
2. Form into balls. Hubby made our meatballs the size of raquetballs – so bigger than golf balls, but smaller than tennis balls. When assembling our subs, we cut them in half.
3. Pan fry the meatballs until the outsides are a nice brown.
4. Cook in the oven at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until cooked through.

Sauce:

1. Add tomato sauce and tomato paste into a bowl. Mix until smooth.
2. Add seasonings. There really is no measurement to this. You just add the seasonings until you get a taste that you desire. You can use whatever spices you have on hand, but this particular night, I used garlic powder, Italian seasoning, oregano and onion salt. I always add a little bit and mix it all up and then taste test –
   
   it is easier to add more seasoning than it is to remove too much seasoning.
   
3. Put sauce into a sauce pan and heat until hot.
4. Add the cooked meatballs to the sauce.

Assembly:

• As mentioned earlier, we cut our meatballs in half so they fit on the sandwich easier. It all depends on the size of your meatballs.
• We cut our hoagie rolls horizontally and placed provolone cheese in it so that the meatballs would nestle in the fold of the cheese.
• Add meatballs and sauce.
• Add mozzarella cheese (optional).

Beware – they are messy, but they are delicious! Even Buggy (my 6 year old) ate them up!