Friday, May 24, 2013

pasketti

today is a double-post day, it seems.  the only reason for that is as i was looking back on my blog posts i found this one.  it had an awesome title, but nothing else in it at all so i had to figure out what i had intended for it to be.  i think that i meant to post my spaghetti sauce recipe.  amd i also need to try and think about what story i had to segue into the recipe.  i did come up with one-probably not the one i had intended to use, but interesting anyway. 

when i was a kid, i hated my mom's spaghetti.  hated it with a passion.  if that was what we were having for dinner, i would do my best to beg and cry for just plain noodles with no sauce please mom please if i eat this i am gonna throw up.  (this never worked, and often resulted in eating spaghetti for a lot of days in a row.)  i came up with a lot of reasons why i couldn't eat it: i didn't like tomatoes, it didn't have meatballs, it was too lumpy, it had too much seasoning, etc, etc, etc.  what i really meant, however, was that it wasn't ragu from a can.  all my other friends ate their spaghetti sauce from a can, and i was the only weirdo who's mom made it from scratch and then froze it in batches to use later.  why couldn't we just be a normal family, for pete's sake? 

this mindset of mine didn't just involve spaghetti sauce, but a whole range of food items from macaroni and cheese to mashed potatoes.  my mom was a health nut before it was cool, and made all these items from scratch to increase nutritional value and to save on cost.  (remember, she was feeding an army.) i didn't understand that when i was eight, and simply pined for boxed mac n cheese and instant potatoes, along with that ragu spaghetti sauce.  i was pretty sure that velveeta was also awesome.  and ya know- if i could just eat normal foods, maybe the cool kids would like me more. 

then my mom got a sams club membership, and found out that easy could be cheap, and the army was getting older and eating vast quantities of food, so she started buying the easy stuff.  and for a while, i was in heaven.  but then, slowly but surely, i started missing the good stuff.  i missed spaghetti. and two years later, when i was sixteen, i started to take over cooking the family meals.  and this was the first recipe i asked for.  because there's nothing as wonderful as a homemade spaghetti sauce.  it just took me a while to realise it. 

mom's spaghetti sauce (with only a couple of modifications... a la me.)

2 lbs italian sausage
1 med. onion, diced
6-8 garlic cloves, diced
1 very large can diced tomatoes
2 small cans tomato paste (8oz or 1 16 oz)
Basil- fresh if you can, but dried works well too
Oregano- see above
Red pepper flake
Salt and pepper
Sugar

brown the sausage together with the onion and garlic.  when everything is browned and softened, add in the tomatoes.  then take the cans the tomatoes came in, and fill them all with water.  add in the water!  (it's so nice that that's all the measuring i do.)  mix it all up, and then add the seasonings.  i usually add the basil and oregano at a 1:1 ratio, about a tablespoon of each.  i think.  add red pepper flake to taste, or don't add it at all.  we like it spicey, so we even get the hot italian sausage.  it's your preference, though.  add about 2 teaspoons of suge- this gets rid of the acidic harshness of the tomatoes.  and don't forget about the salt and pepper.  then bring to a very low simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 2-3 hours.  yup.  it's a long time.  i do this in the crockpot sometimes, but if you do that cut the water in half.  when it thickens, it's ready.  it's even better if you cook it the night before, cool it in the fridge, and reheat it.  it also freezes well and is very easy to double, triple, or whatever you can fit in your biggest pot. 

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