Pine Nut Meatballs with Lemon Yogurt Sauce and Pickled Vegetables

my toddler (when did that happen?)

I've baked and made many things since June or my last post.  There was a peach pie for Fourth of July.  There may have been some cookies somewhere in there.  I hosted a baby shower in mid-November that had a comfort food theme so I did chili, roasted apple soup, ginger apple sparklers, rolls, and gluten free cheesecake for the mamma to be, not to mention lots of appetizers (the baked salami with mustard dip was a hit!).  And most recently, I made pear bread topped with chocolate ganache for our Thanksgiving breakfast and old-fashioned ginger snaps for Thanksgiving snacking.  Because you need to snack during Thanksgiving, right?

A few Saturdays ago I ended up making a really great dinner and I wanted to come here and tell you about it.  It was one of those combinations that I sort of made up, and it turned out so well that I figured I should at least chronicle it here, if for nothing else so that I can reference it again when I can't think of an impressive yet easy dinner recipe.

I started with Molly Wizenberg's book (previously) and started thumbing through while little A ate his breakfast (boy, that kid can eat).  I found this meatball recipe and since it used some of my favorite ingredients - pine nuts, golden raisins, cilantro - plus I had most of it already, I figured it was fate.  The lemon yogurt dipping sauce also sounded wonderful, but I felt like I needed something spicy to pair with the cool dip and the warm, filling meatballs.  My husband gave me Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexican for my birthday and one of the first recipes I bookmarked was one for pickled chilies and vegetables and figured now was a great time to bring out that recipe (here is a similar one).

And, lo and behold, it was a success!  My only complaint with the meatballs (I used turkey) is that they tended to fall apart slightly when I cooked them, so I ended up having a pan full of mostly intact meatballs with some having fallen apart and weaped their contents all over the place.  No matter, really - they made for really great sticky cooked bits that we ate with a spoon along with the whole meatballs.  Everything played well together - the yogurt sauce helped cool off the spicy marinated peppers and was a nice smooth sauce to balance the wonderfully chunky meatballs.