Italian Wedding Soup

I debated reviewing this recipe because I made enough changes that it might be considered too different from the original recipe. But the variation produced such a wonderful soup that I decided to go ahead. I made half a batch of this soup (it easily divided), used parsley instead of dill (my husband hates dill) and Swiss chard instead of spinach (the chard was gorgeous when I went shopping yesterday). I also used a different meatball recipe simply because I had some leftover meatball mix (Gourmet, January 2009) from the last time I made spaghetti and meatballs.

I chopped up about a half cup of the chard stems and sauteed them with the carrot/onion/celery the recipe calls for and it added a really nice subtle sweet flavor to the base veggies. The chard leaves are added in the last few minutes of cooking. BC calls for adding spinach at the last minute but the chard greens take a bit longer than that to soften up.

Finished off with grated Parmesan, this soup basically defines Italian comfort food.