Quick Meals

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     Last night was not a fun evening in my kitchen.  I had given in to multiple requests from the fam and made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dinner.  Now, this wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that the fam insists on very specific parameters for this meal.....Campbell's tomato soup and Velveeta "cheese" sandwiches.  Ugh.

     First of all, pasteurized processed cheese food is not cheese.  Brie is cheese, Swiss and Gruyere are cheeses, even cheddar is cheese.  Velveeta is....I don't know.....some bastardization of cheese invented so that Americans could ruin baseball with nachos.  How can you catch a fly ball with your fingers covered in pasteurized processed cheese food, I ask you?  And the soup....having not had canned soup in a very long time, I was surprised by how flavorless it was.  For the amount of salt and junk they put in there, you'd think it would taste like something.  It didn't.  All that added up to a meal that, while quick and easy, was a huge disappointment.

     Night before last, we had gotten home late from helping my sister move.  We were all tired and starving, and I needed something quick and easy.  I chose spaghetti, and I made the sauce from scratch.

     Ordinarily, I would have started a couple of hours ahead of time, chopped fresh onion and garlic and mushrooms, and let the whole thing simmer for a while.  But even in less than half an hour, I was able to whip up some scratch made sauce that had great flavor.  I started by browning some ground beef, and then just threw everything else in there.  Dried minced onion, garlic powder, Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, sugar, and some crushed red pepper for fun.  A cup of beef stock and a cup of that morning's leftover coffee, for cojones.  Two cans of diced tomatoes pureed in the Magic Bullet (favorite kitchen appliance...seriously, it does everything), and I had a great sauce.  And it was done by the time the pasta was.  Not bad.

     Now, I'm not a total snob.  I use dried pasta because for one thing, I don't have a pasta machine, and for another, I think it's an enormous pain for a little reward.  Thus....dried pasta.  I use canned tomatoes because at this time of year, they're better than fresh.  And I do use a lot of dried spices.  The fresh ones just don't keep well and they go bad before I can use them.  So until I can plant them outside (I had an herb garden on my windowsill once and the spiders LOVED it, so now it's outside) I'll use dried.  But the sauce was full of flavor, ready in about 20 minutes, and I knew exactly what was in it.  I call that a good day.