Taking the rash out of trashy food

I have a slight fascination w/trashy food, but specifically the variety that consists of very few ingredients. When I lived in Grosse Pointe, I was introduced to the chicken + cranberry sauce + onion soup mix + creamy French dressing stew. It's great, and I learned it's a staple at certain GP parties. They're not exactly known for their extravagance or palates in that town (cheap, cheap), but they definitely found a winner there.
Now, recently, I discovered another little gem, and that is the cocktail party meatball trick. Meatballs + chili sauce + grape jelly.
WHAT?!
Yes, it's true. I tasted them at no fewer than two parties this winter, and they're good! Both hostesses told me that they just buy frozen meatballs, throw them into their slow cookers, and add a bottle of chili sauce and a jar of grape jelly. Three components!
Interesting!
But I wanted to sort of redeem the whole concept by taking the skeevy-product part out of the equation -- you know, the artificialness of the ready-made meatballs and cheap jelly. I thought it'd be a fun experiment.
So I started by making the meatballs, omitting the usual Parmesan cheese, since it didn't seem to belong. These meatballs are sweet-savoury and lean more toward barbeque & Asian flavorings. Therefore, I made a pretty plain meatball, with salt & pepper, breadcrumbs, a little dry oregano, and a sprinkling of allspice. I also added a little bit of my Ibiza salt con chili.

I bought a good-quality, all-natural grape "spread" -- yes, it gets elevated to being called spread if there's only fruit, pectin, and fruit juice. And I bought a good, standard chili sauce.

Once the meatballs were browned and partially cooked through, I added the grape jelly (c'mon) and chili sauce. And another fairy dusting of the chili salt. I let it all come to a bubble, and then turned down the heat and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, I made rice, and my choice -- in keeping w/the theme -- was something called Texmati -- a long grain American basmati. I also finely chopped up a green onion for the final flourish.

I loved the results, and the whole process was easy. Now that this first step of the experiment has been done, one could move onward and make it all from scratch, omitting the bottled ingredients.
Then again, that would sort of defeat the point! This is a nice happy medium. However, tweaking the tweak, the next time I make this, I will add dried chili flakes for more heat, and pop in a piece of star anise for a little depth.