On Friday night I tried to make pasta sauce – bacon, celery, onions, and tomatoes frozen from last summer. And a splash of wine left from the party last week. After I put in the wine, the sauce got a funny smell – like plastic. I think it was the wine – Mark thought it was the tomatoes. So on Saturday, I had to thaw out some more tomatoes and make another sauce, to check. This one was made by a method I got years ago from the Chicago Tribune for a simple fat free tomato sauce – puree the tomatoes, add garlic, a pinch of sugar, red pepper flakes and dried oregano. You can also puree roasted red peppers and add them, too. Then boil it down for about 45 minutes.The second sauce smells OK, and I am going to make it into a lasagna with spinach. So, I guess I can stop worrying about my hoard of frozen tomatoes – in plastic bags – are they all getting a plasticky taste? I’m down to only 4 – 5 bags and 2 containers, anyways. So I can turn my attention back to worrying about other stuff, like:
- the drippy sprayer on the kitchen sink
- money
- my kids
- the ringing noise in the basement
- the furnace that needs to be cleaned at the other house
- the peeling paint on the back of this house
- the pain in my right shin – is it cancer? and all the other aches & pains of my 56-year-old body
- do I really need to buy an extended license for CS5?
- Which car, computer, major appliance, [alternate calamity name here] will break next?**
- Strange smell sauce
- Goat cheese & honey on a raison bagel, and Bubbe prunes
I had goat cheese on a raison bagel for Saturday breakfast and Bubbe prunes – the prunes in a dish with brown sugar and half a sliced lemon, then you pour boiling water over and put them in the fridge overnight.
And the girls – our Dutch exchange student, plus two from Italy, one from Finland, and a Muslim girl they’re friends with at school – ate the bacon sauce on fettuccine before they went to see the Hunger Games. Although I think the non-pork-eating Muslim brought along a can of her own tomato soup.
**The dishwasher wins – the moulding around the front door has been loose for awhile – I tuck it back in after every wash load. But it came all the way out on Saturday. With help, I got it mostly stuffed back in, and ran the dishwasher last night, and it only dripped a little – but I think I have to add the repair guy to my list of Monday morning calls.
