“Mamma mia, that’a spicey meatball-a.”
Back in the late ’60s, there was a hilarious commercial showing an Italian man tasting some meatballs that his doting wife had just placed before him. He famously remarked, “Mamma mia, that’s-a spicey meatball-a.” And zap, that phrase entered the American lexicon. People all over the country were walking around imitating this man. The beauty of the commercial: it was not trying to sell us spaghetti, meatballs or pasta sauce. The commercial was a spoof of a group of people trying to film a food commercial while the actor, in take after take, must taste the meatballs. At the end of the spoof, we learn the real product being sold to us is…Alka-Seltzer. I have no idea what was in those meatballs that was supposed to be giving that guy such heartburn. I do know the meatballs from the recipe below won’t cause you to need Alka-Seltzer.
…