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A return to the from-scratch king cake

February 23, 2012 by shaggerty

I gave up on finding an authentic, reasonably priced king cake in Huntsville this year. The king cakes at Publix have gone downhill since the days in which the bakery reportedly imported simple, unbaked cakes from Louisiana, baking and decorating them in the days leading up to Mardi Gras. This year, the offerings were filled with cream cheese in various artificial flavors, and I’m tired of bakeries trying to complicate the king cake. It’s SUPPOSED to be relatively simple. By the time you combine a thick, sweet filling with powdered sugar icing AND a heap of colored sugar on top, you’ve got a sickly sweet concoction that in no way resembles a traditional king cake.

Even Earth Fare got in on the act, promising me a king cake complete with apple filling.

No thanks.

After last year’s debacle with frozen bread dough, I decided to simply dedicate an afternoon to the old Southern Living recipe that my mom found some 20 years ago. It had been too long since the husband and I had enjoyed the real thing, and I had volunteered to make a king cake for my co-workers in lieu of suffering through some sort of monstrosity filled with artificially flavored goop.

I’m never convinced that I haven’t added too much flour in my efforts to make the dough manageable. My biggest complaint about this recipe is that it calls for flour by volume rather than weight; measuring flour using the scale is much more accurate than using measuring cups. The cake turned out fine, however, with both the husband and the co-workers giving it rave reviews.

I’d still give somebody $20 to make an acceptable king cake for me, but apparently I’m not going to be able to do that in Huntsville anytime soon.

King Cake

(Adapted from Southern Living)

Makes 2 cakes

  • ¼ cup butter
  • 1 (16-ounce) container sour cream
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 (.25-ounce) envelopes active dry yeast
  • 1 tablespoon white sugar
  • ½ cup warm water (100 to 110 degrees)
  • 2 eggs
  • 6½ cups all-purpose flour, divided
  • ½ cup white sugar
  • 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
  • Frosting (see below)
  • Colored sugars (see below)

Cook the first four ingredients in a saucepan over low heat, stirring often, until the butter melts. Cool the mixture to between 100 and 110 degrees.

Dissolve the yeast and 1 tablespoon sugar in ½ cup warm water in a large bowl; let stand 5 minutes. Add the butter mixture, eggs and 2 cups flour; beat at medium speed with an electric mixer for 2 minutes or until smooth.

Gradually stir in enough remaining flour to make a soft dough.

Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Place in a well-greased bowl, turning to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85 degrees), free from drafts for 1 hour or until doubled in bulk.

Stir together ½ cup sugar and cinnamon; set aside. Punch dough down; divide in half. Turn one portion out onto a lightly floured surface; roll to a 28-x-10-inch rectangle.

Spread half each of the cinnamon mixture and the softened butter on the dough. Roll the dough, jellyroll fashion, starting at the long side. Place the dough roll, seam side down, on a lightly greased baking sheet.

Bring the ends together to form an oval ring, moistening and pinching the edges together to seal. Repeat with remaining dough, cinnamon mixture and butter.

Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden. Decorate with bands of frosting, and sprinkle with colored sugars.

Note: This year, I spooned the frosting into a zip-top bag, cut off a corner and squeezed the frosting onto the cake. This gave me a much neater, more even application than I would have gotten by simply drizzling it on the cake. Also, sprinkling the sugar on top will make a HUGE mess. You’re going to want to sprinkle the sugar on the king cake far away from the edge of the countertop or table so you don’t get sugar on the floor. Moisten a couple of dish towels with water and place them on the surface beneath the cake platter (cookie sheet, whatever) that’ll be holding the cake as you sprinkle on the sugar.

Frosting

  • 3 cups powdered sugar
  • 3 tablespoons butter, melted
  • 3 tablespoons milk
  • ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Stir together powdered sugar and melted butter. Add milk to reach desired consistency for drizzling; stir in vanilla.

Note: The original recipe advises you to divide the frosting and tint it green, yellow and purple, but since you’re going to coat it with colored sugar anyway, you’ll do just as well to leave it white.

Colored Sugars

  • 1½ cups white sugar, divided
  • 2 drops green food color
  • 2 drops yellow food coloring
  • 2 drops red food color
  • 2 drops blue food coloring

Place ½ cup sugar and green food coloring in a jar or zip-top plastic bag; seal.

Shake vigorously to evenly mix color with sugar. Repeat procedure with ½ cup sugar and yellow food coloring.

For purple, combine red and blue food coloring before adding to remaining ½ cup sugar.

Note: A couple of years ago, I discovered that Wal-Mart made much prettier, more vividly colored sugar than I could. My colored sugar was always paler than the sugar I saw in bakeries, and it was decidedly non-sparkly. You might have to use blue instead of purple, but you’ll live.

Posted in Eats, Huntsville | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Simply open a jar to impress guests — or just treat yourself

February 20, 2012 by shaggerty

I’ll forever be thankful to my mother-in-law for introducing me to the easiest appetizer I’ve ever served: marinated artichoke hearts.

You’re probably thinking, wow, isn’t it kind of tricky to trim artichokes? And wouldn’t you have to marinate them for a few hours before serving? Wait a minute, wouldn’t you have to cook them, too?

The answer to all of those questions is “yes.” Which is why I simply open a jar of Vigo’s marinated artichoke hearts and carve them up into bite-size pieces, which I then serve with the fanciest crackers I can dig out of the pantry. (Why Vigo? It’s in stock. There aren’t exactly dozens of brands on the supermarket shelves vying for my business.)

After all, if I’m serving a meal that’s elaborate enough to justify an appetizer, chances are I’ve already spent a couple of hours in the kitchen prepping the other dishes. This is one culinary shortcut that I find completely acceptable.

And best of all? If it’s just me and the husband, they’re mine. All mine. Leftovers get chopped up into even smaller pieces to use as a salad ingredient throughout the week, and the marinade itself makes a delicious (if somewhat thick and rich) salad dressing.

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Roasted chickpeas are worth multiple attempts

February 7, 2012 by shaggerty

Rarely do I give a failed Internet-based recipe a second chance. There are simply too many other recipes to try, and unless I can point to something I know I did wrong (it happens), I’ll usually just write off such failures as lessons learned.

Roasted chickpeas, though? I WANTED the roasted chickpeas to work. So when the first batch came out half-crunchy and half-mushy a couple of weeks ago, I knew I had to try again. The few (very few) roasted chickpeas that were roasted to perfection were ROASTED TO PERFECTION. They were tiny, crunchy bombs of flavor.

I found two problems with my first attempt:

  1. The original recipe called for what seems like A LOT of olive oil: 1.5 tablespoons for one can of chickpeas. I was left with oil oozing around on the parchment paper beneath the coated chickpeas.
  2. My oven can be somewhat unpredictable. It will bake three tiny loaves of zucchini bread to utter perfection within the recommended recipe time, or it will take twice as long as it should to bake a pan of cookies. And sometimes it’ll burn those cookies on the bottom without leaving a hint of gold on their pale little tops.

So, less olive oil and more time in the oven seemed to be in order. Also, I decided to add the seasoning BEFORE roasting, since, in theory, perfectly roasted chickpeas would be dry to the touch and wouldn’t allow the seasonings to stick.

A word on the seasonings: You can use anything you like. I used Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning. I’m not sure why you would use anything else, but I imagine Greek seasoning would also work. Crafty Kristen recommends a teaspoon or two of cracked black pepper and a generous sprinkling of sea salt.

This batch turned out perfectly — even the biggest chickpeas roasted to crunchy perfection.

Crispy Roasted Chickpeas

Adapted from Steamy Kitchen

  • One 15-oz. can chickpeas
  • Olive oil
  • Salt/seasoning mixture

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees (I might go up 25 degrees next time).

Drain the chickpeas in a colander and rinse with water. Rub the chickpeas, a couple of handfuls at a time, between two paper towels to loosen the thin skin on them. Remove the skins until you get tired of removing the skins, then move on. Your roasted chickpeas will be delightful with or without the skins.

Spread a piece of parchment paper out on a baking sheet. Or don’t — hey, I’m not washing your dishes. Spread the chickpeas out on the parchment paper. Put a little olive oil in your hands and coat the chickpeas lightly — you want just enough oil to allow the seasoning to stick. Sprinkle on the seasoning. Less is likely more.

Steamy Kitchen’s original recipe said to roast the chickpeas for 30-40 minutes, but my oven took more like 50 minutes. Stir them around about halfway through. The chickpeas will turn a deep golden brown when they’re done, but the best way to check for doneness is to grab one of the bigger ones, cool it off for 30 seconds and eat it. If it’s crunchy, you’re in business.

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Discovering guacamole: better late than never

February 6, 2012 by shaggerty

Why in the world have I NOT been making guacamole all my life?

The answer, of course, is that I spent most of my life eating (or, more specifically, not eating) the mediocre guacamole served in so many Mexican restaurants.

Overprocessed into a perfectly smooth paste and refrigerated well past the point of freshness, restaurant guacamole has always been something I avoided. I never ordered it, and never considered making it at home.

Thankfully, a restaurant finally changed my mind on guacamole a couple of years ago. When a friend ordered the dish at Cantina Laredo, the server made it tableside, mashing several fresh ingredients together with a fork. It was delicious. It was chunky. It was FRESH.

I thought maybe it was only my taste buds maturing, so in a couple of weeks I tried the guacamole at another Mexican place.  Nope. Back to stale and pasty. I realized that unless I witnessed the smashing of the avocados, the guacamole was likely to disappoint.

Still, I didn’t attempt to make my own. The husband wasn’t enthusiastic about the dish, and, having never dealt with avocados before, I was a little awed by the process.

Fast forward to last week. Somehow, guacamole is an official Super Bowl food, and Earth Fare was offering me two free avocados with a $5 purchase.

Please. I can spend $5 in Earth Fare without ever leaving the Wall o’ Grains.

I looked for a simple recipe, although now I realize that guacamole, like pico de gallo, is one of those dishes that doesn’t require a recipe so much as a healthy willingness to taste as you go. (Check.)

I settled on the California Avocado Commission’s recipe for Guacamole Autentico, which seemed beginner-worthy. It was a cinch to put together (turns out it’s extremely easy to work with avocados), and I thought it was delicious (the husband is still not a guacamole fan, although he readily ate a couple of bites to be nice).

Lime and cilantro are dominant flavors in this recipe, and not everybody likes cilantro. I would probably use two Serrano chilies instead of one next time for more heat, or I might just switch to a jalapeno. And I could totally live without the tasteless bits of Roma tomato, but a REAL tomato may have potential. I forgot to add hot pepper sauce, and I used plain old salt and pepper instead of sea salt and white pepper — still delicious. I mashed it all together with a potato masher, not a fork, because I was hungry and the fork method was taking forever. Just don’t get too overzealous with the mashing no matter what you use.

Guacamole Autentico

Recipe from the California Avocado Commission

4 servings

  • 2 ripe, fresh California avocados, peeled and seeded
  • 1⁄4 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1⁄2 ripe, medium Roma tomato, seeded and diced
  • 1⁄4 cup minced sweet white onion
  • 1 Serrano chili, seeded and minced
  • 1⁄4 cup cilantro leaves, chopped
  • 2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
  • Hot pepper sauce
  • Sea salt, to taste
  • White pepper, to taste

Cut avocado into large chunks and mash coarsely in large bowl with a fork. Add remaining ingredients and blend gently; leaving some small chunks is fine. Taste and adjust seasoning with more pepper sauce, salt and pepper if desired.

Serve immediately. Eat with enthusiasm.

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Running past old limitations

February 3, 2012 by shaggerty

I always thought I hated running, for one good reason (although maybe it counts as two): boobs.

I was on the girl’s basketball team in seventh grade, which also happened to be the year that my breasts started sprouting in earnest. Sports bras weren’t a thing yet in the ’80s … boobs bouncing down the court were just part of the scenery of practices and games (the Lady Hawks included eighth- and ninth-graders in all stages of development). I wasn’t comfortable with the bouncing itself or spectators watching the bouncing, however.

And the utter stupidity of being called the Lady Hawks: DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED.

When sports bras began to become more popular in the ’90s, they still weren’t worth much for ladies with anything bigger than B cups. (And don’t think I’m bragging until YOU try to fit them into an Ann Taylor blouse that isn’t so big the shoulder seams are drooping toward your elbows or so tight that the top button is threatening to put someone’s eye out.)

I tried the double-down trick for aerobics classes (SHUT UP) in college, but wearing two sports bras at once pretty much doubles the amount of boob sweat you produce in half the time.

I made peace with the non-bouncy elliptical machine for a few years, then discovered weight training, which I simply LOVED. My body responded quickly, toning here, putting on a little bit of muscle there. Best of all, I didn’t feel skinny or fat, just STRONG.

Even the most effective fitness programs become ruts after a while, however. Bored with weights and walking and the occasional foray into the neighborhood gym (and vividly aware that my cardio stamina was rapidly diminishing), I signed up for Madison Adventure Boot Camp in November.

Finally, I had a reason (and marching orders from Joe Martin, boot camp owner and official trainer of the Rocket City Bloggers) to buy one of those pricey new and improved sports bras that I had read so much about the past few years — a Moving Comfort model from Fleet Feet, which carries a huge variety of bras in a tiny display area and will let you try them ALL on if you need to.

We ran in boot camp, and ran some more. I almost hurt myself — luckily, my shin splints turned out to be less splinty than some — but I discovered that, with the bouncing problem solved, running not only wouldn’t kill me, it could actually be fun.

I’m not the best runner in the world, mind you. I stop to pet dogs. I slow down so I don’t scare ducks. Sometimes I slow to a stroll, convinced that I’m going to die on the street of a heart explosion like a 1985 cocaine addict with really bad judgement.

But then I start running again. One more sidewalk segment. Then another. To the end of that row of hedges. No, wait. THAT row of hedges. I shave two minutes off my route and think, next week, another two minutes is coming off.

Running makes me feel like I can do anything, as long as I can find the right bra and stop to pet dogs. ANYTHING. And that feeling is worth a LOT of $50 sports bras.

 

Posted in Fitness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Sensational salsa packs a subtle heat

January 31, 2012 by shaggerty

First, an admission: I don’t think I’ve ever eaten Chili’s salsa, so I can’t tell you whether this Chili’s Copycat Salsa recipe that I found via Pinterest tastes like the real thing or not.

As a certified salsa junkie, I CAN tell you that I’ll be making this recipe again.

I love making fresh pico de gallo, but there’s only so much time a girl can dedicate to chopping onions, jalapenos and tomatoes into tiny little pieces. (Also, the inferiority of grocery store “tomatoes” has simply become unacceptable. When a potent blend of jalapenos, lime juice and cilantro doesn’t hide your insipidness, you’ve reached new lows as an ingredient.)

I can live with store-bought salsa, but it’s just so nondescript. Brands advertised as spicy are inevitably as plain as can be, and I wouldn’t be able to tell one brand from another in a blind taste test even if I had money riding on it.

The canned tomatoes in this recipe caught my eye, since they meant I wouldn’t be rewarding mediocrity in the produce section. I couldn’t actually find a small can of jalapenos, but I have to admit that maybe I didn’t try too hard after I spotted the big jar of sliced jalapenos. Toss and taste, unless you’re scared of heat.

All the ingredients blended together quickly in the tiny food-processor attachment that came with my immersion blender (I only made half the recipe).

I’ll warn you: The end product has what some might find an overwhelming cumin flavor. It’s what makes this concoction distinctive, but it might not be for everyone.

The heat from the jalapenos is subtle, kicking in a couple of seconds after you bite into a chip filled with salsa. Two days later, however, the salsa seems to be packing a little more heat, making me wonder how long I could safely store this mixture in the fridge to allow it to achieve maximum intensity.

Chili’s Copycat Salsa

Recipe from Six Sister’s Stuff

  • 2 14.5-oz. cans whole tomatoes, drained
  • 1 4-oz. can diced or whole jalapenos (not pickled)–about 4-5 jalapenos (or less if you don’t like a lot of spice)
  • 1/4 cup yellow onion, cut into quarters (you can also use dried minced onion)
  • 1 tsp. garlic salt
  • 1/2-1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. cumin
  • 1/2 tsp. sugar
  • 1 tsp. lime juice

Puree all ingredients in a food processor until smooth.

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Menacing mandoline produces delectable potato dish

January 30, 2012 by shaggerty

Photo courtesy of Bakers Royale

Saturday, I applied a popular exercise mantra — “No pain, no gain” — to cooking.

The gain — delicious Mini Pommes Anna — was totally worth the pain.

I had purchased the entry-level OXO mandoline slicer several months ago, partly so I could make some version of pommes Anna, which is simply very thin slices of potato layered and baked with butter. (And if you’re one of those people who can make paper-thin slices of veggies with a knife, congratulations. You have mad knife skills. I do not.) I was in the middle of my final semester of grad school, however, so the mandoline has been resting in the gadget drawer.

The semester eventually drew to a close, and Pinterest pointed me to this intriguing recipe for smaller, individually sized versions of Pommes Anna, courtesy of Naomi at Bakers Royale. The mandoline finally made its debut.

And boy, was it angry.

Seriously, I underestimated the danger of the mandoline (and found out that just about everybody has a story about somebody taking their fingertip off with one). Having failed to keep the potato attached to the finger-protecting holder mechanism, I ran it across the blade by hand, which worked great right up until the moment I cut my thumb.

I immediately initiated Standard Operating Procedure for kitchen injuries:

  1. Don’t bleed in the food.
  2. Evaluate the injury.
  3. Wash the injury with soap and water.
  4. Wrap the injury with paper towel to try to stop the bleeding, or at least keep the blood out of the food.
  5. Soldier on. You’re not going to make more blood by starving yourself.

It was a minor cut, although it was a heck of a bleeder.

The potatoes were simply divine. The mandoline had cut them into sheer little circles that, when tossed with butter and layered with kosher salt and pepper in a muffin pan, baked up into a luxurious side dish. The husband commented more than once on these buttery and creamy little stacks of goodness.

And yes, there were only four ingredients: Yukon potatoes, butter, salt and pepper. I cut the recipe in half, so it made six. I figured two stacks per person was about right (they compress while baking, so each one ends up being about 1.5 inches high). We each ate a third stack, partly because they were so delectable and partly because they didn’t seem like the kind of food that reheats properly.

And one of us was making replacement blood, after all.

They were definitely a welcome change from mashed potatoes, which is what I usually serve with meat loaf (and more on that fabulous meat loaf later).

As for the mandoline, I think I should probably upgrade to the model with non-slip feet (seems like an upright model might be safer than one that “hooks” over a bowl). Also, a couple of friends pointed me toward Kevlar gloves made for use with mandolines, so those might be showing up in the gadget drawer, too. (Actually, when the first friend, Crafty Kristen, mentioned Kevlar gloves, I kind of thought she was joking — LOL Kevlar gloves for the clumsy cook, very funny. But no. They are real. And possibly a necessity.)

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Believe the hype about blinc mascara

January 25, 2012 by shaggerty

blinc

My Birchbox subscription has taught me a lot about the cosmetics industry.

For example, a lot of women will apparently pay $18 an ounce for a “molecular mist” purported to do everything from keeping skin hydrated to protecting it from “ionizing radiation” emitted from the sun and cellphones.

I thought it smelled like that one perfume that every lady over 75 is contractually obligated to wear, so I tossed it.

Come at me, ionizing radiation.

I’ve also learned that oil-based moisturizers, even those containing lavender-scented unicorn tears of happiness, make my eyes swell, which I guess puffs the tiny wrinkles right out.

Overall, the Birchbox experiment has been loads of fun, especially when the $10-a-month box of samples includes makeup. My first box held a full-size container of Laura Geller Baked Blush N’ Brighten blusher/highlighter, and this month I received stila’s Smudge Stick liner in Lionfish (that’s a coppery brown for those of you unfamiliar with hilarious names for cosmetics shades).

The Birchbox item that’s changed my makeup routine, however, is blinc mascara (and no, the cosmetics industry absolutely CANNOT afford to purchase uppercase letters for their company names).

I had been having trouble with mascara for a while. L’Oreal either stopped making or stopped distributing my favorite mascara, FeatherLash, a few years ago, and while other varieties were certainly waterproof, they weren’t anywhere NEAR smudgeproof or flakeproof. By midday, especially in the summer, I was almost guaranteed to have light black smudges under my eyes. Of course, I couldn’t remove waterproof smudges without removing any foundation or concealer that I might be wearing, so sometimes I would just skip mascara in the morning, especially if I was planning on wearing makeup on an evening outing and didn’t want to start over.

The blinc sample promised to form smudgeproof tubes of color around my lashes instead of painting them. It also pointed out a DUH factoid about waterproof mascara: Your skin’s oil makes it smudge because it’s waterproof, not oilproof (oil is a central ingredient in many of the very products that REMOVE waterproof mascara, after all).

So how DO you remove mascara that’s waterproof AND oilproof? It turns out that blinc is actually water-resistant rather than waterproof. Sweat, rain and tears shouldn’t affect it, however, since it requires a combination of water AND pressure for removal. I’ve found that a few concentrated splashes of warm water, followed by gentle tugging with my fingertips, takes it right off. This method actually results in fewer lashes getting tugged out, too.

So, yeah, I totally spent $25 on a tube of mascara for the first time ever. Wonders never cease.

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Views from my subconscious: snakes in a yard, water everywhere else

January 24, 2012 by shaggerty

Since I was a little kid, my go-to anxiety dream involved snakes. In this recurring dream, I would step outside my house to find a yard filled with snakes, and I would have to walk carefully to avoid them. No matter what house I walked out of, the yard itself was inevitably the yard from our home in Collins, Miss., where I went to elementary school.

This was never what I would call a nightmare, since Dream Me would just sort of sigh and start picking her way through snakes, but it always occurred during stressful times.

After Hurricane Katrina flooded my home, my hometown and a boggling number of other places I loved, my subconscious traded snakes for water as an expression of anxiety.

Again, these dreams aren’t nightmares. The problems encountered — usually water rising where it shouldn’t be rising, or me somehow falling into a deep body of water — aren’t so much scary as they are irritating.

During one particularly active dream sequence a couple of weeks ago, I found myself seated at a table that was really part of a boat that plunged over the side of the dock when the driver gunned the engine (I never said my dreams obeyed the laws of mechanics or physics). I swam back up to the dock and climbed into a dockside restaurant, which immediately began to turn sideways since it turned out to be a huge boat that was rolling over. As I kicked my way out of a window into the water, Dream Me really couldn’t believe she had to swim all the way up from the bottom of the ocean AGAIN.

I mean COME ON.

I totally get it. My subconscious gets overwhelmed with anxiety and takes it out on my dreams. It takes what I’m apparently scared of deep down and releases it at 2 a.m.

My everyday way to cope with anxiety is to constantly analyze how to fix problems. I’m on to Plan C before most people even realize that Plan A is done for and Plan B is just ludicrous.

It’s the same in my dreams. Instead of waking up in a cold sweat when the boat plunges beneath the surface of the water, Dream Me is concentrating on swimming horizontally before trying to head up to the surface in case the sinking boat creates a whirlpool (apparently my subconscious thinks it just might, no matter what the Mythbusters say).

Healthy? You’ll have to ask my theoretical psychotherapist. But it makes sense to me that working through dream anxieties rather than simply having them scare you half out of your pajamas has to be pretty good self-therapy.

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Slow cooker marinara sauce: the new household standard

January 13, 2012 by shaggerty

Photo courtesy of Budget Bytes

That was fast.

Just a week after I took up the pursuit of an easy homemade alternative to store-bought pasta sauce, I think I’ve found my go-to recipe.

Over at Budget Bytes, Beth posted a recipe for a slow cooker marinara sauce in November (gotta give kudos to Pinterest for helping me find it). She noted that the long, slow cooking process (eight hours on low) carmelizes the sugar in the crushed tomatoes. Carmelization gives the sauce a depth of flavor that jarred pasta sauce simply cannot replicate. It’s got the hint of sweetness that a good tomato-based sauce should have without the artificial, overpoweringly syrupy sweetness offered by most manufactured sauces these days.

It was a cinch to make, too. I diced an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic the previous night and dumped everything into the 4-quart slow cooker crock the next morning. The husband texted me at lunch to let me know that it smelled delicious.

I browned a little ground beef to make a simple meat sauce and served it over two small servings of penne. (And while I’m talking about pasta, let me recommend that you cook half the recommended serving size listed on the box. The suggested serving sizes are obviously calculated to make you buy more pasta, not maintain a healthy weight.)

I might add some crushed red pepper next time for a more piquant sauce, but other than that, I’m very satisfied with this recipe. Like other tomato-based sauces, it’s going to freeze well, meaning that I’ll now have ready-to-serve pasta sauce in the freezer instead of the pantry.  It’s going to be versatile, too: Besides meat sauce, it’s going to be a great topping for ravioli and a good dipping sauce for the husband’s homemade calzones.

Next goal: A go-to, not-too-salty soup recipe to keep in the freezer.

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