Fantabulous Sweet n' Sour Meatballs!

Seriously. I thought I'd share this random kitchen concoction of mine. I wanted to make my moms recipe for sweet and sour meatballs. It's a pretty simple sauce at the best of times, so I didn't take any pictures or anything. I thought it was just going to be a regular dinner. First, I assembled the meatballs:

Approximately 1/2 lb of ground beef (I don't have a food scale and we buy bulk. So its just roughly measured out and repacked into smaller packages.)
I thawed that out, then threw in 1 egg, approximately 3/4 of a tsp of prep'd mustard, about 2 tsp garlic powder, 2 tsp of onion flakes, 2 tsp of ginger, 1 tsp red pepper flakes and 1 tsp of worcestershire sauce.
Nextly I mixed it all together with about 1/4-1/2 cup of quick oats.
I assembled le meatballs! Which means I made 'em about the size of a heaping tablespoon. I like 'em about two bites myself. These I browned up in a little bit of olive oil.

Then I went to make my sauce! This is where things got a bit abnormal. Usually the sauce is 1 part brown sugar to 1 part vinegar to 1 part water. Mix with about 1 tsp of soy sauce, 1 tsp of hoi sin sauce, 1 tbs of ketchup and about 2 tsp of ginger. But I have no ketchup, and no brown sugar! The brown sugar was really the catch. I used it all up yesterday making cookies.

So I substituted.

I used 1/4 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup of white vinegar and then about 1/2 a cup to 3/4 cup of flat pepsi that was in the fridge. I figured pepsi is basically sugar water and molasses, which is what they use to make brown sugar. Seemed like a logical substitution. So I added the regular amount of ginger and soy sauce,  and a little extra hoi sin sauce.

I poured it all over the meatballs when they were browned on all sides and let it simmer on mid-high heat for about 15-20 minutes while I cooked up some rice to serve it over. About 10 minutes in I decided to chop up two mini sweet bell pepers to throw in. I kept them big 'cuz I like 'em a bit crunchy still, and they were.

Seriously, next time I make this I will take pictures. It was phenomenal. Best use I've found yet for flat cola.