Ingredients — Rice Mixture

• *1 pound of white rice, boiled and drained
• 1 1/2 cups of grated Italian cheese
• 8 tablespoons tomato sauce
• 3 eggs, beaten
• salt to taste

Add all ingredients to cooked rice.

Ingredients — Meat Mixture

• 1/2 onion, chopped fine
• 1 lb ground beef
• 4 tablespoons of tomato sauce

To make balls:

Moisten left hand, put rice in it, put in a little meat mixture, cover with rice and shape into a ball. Cover with beaten egg then coat with flour and continue rolling into a ball the size of a small orange.

Deep fry in about one quart olive oil until brown.

*Do not use coverted rice; it will not stick together. Use the smaller grain such as the Italian type called “arborio” .

 I never really made rice balls.  These were Lucy Taormina’s specialty.  When she would visit us in Pennsauken all the women in the family would get together and spend the whole day making rice balls.  The men would keep coming into the kitchen and eat them as fast as we could make them.  We never sat down to eat them as a meal.  It was always a special occasion when we got together to make reice bals.  I don’t think anyone will make them now.  They’re hard to make.  I don’t know where the recipe came from. My mother may have brought it over from Sicily and then passed it on to my sister, Josie, who passed it on to her daughter, Lucy.