Meatball Soup with Spinach and Crispy Garlic

Too busy or too tired to cook, but too hungry not to? This is the soup for you. Served Thai style, it goes with rice and other dishes, but if you ladle the soup over a big bowl of cooked rice noodles, jasmine rice, or elbow macaroni, you will have a one-pot, one-bowl, satisfying meal. I use a bag of washed, prepped spinach, preferably the sturdy, curly, dark green kind, but baby spinach leaves are also fine, as are Swiss chard, watercress, or bok choy.