I wanted pasta yesterday so I went to make a meat sauce.  I opened a quart jar of what might have been tomato sauce – the lid wasn’t marked but it was either tomato soup or plain tomato sauce.  It turned out to be soup so it was put aside and I opened another jar.  My meat sauce used Italian sausage and hamburger with all the usual extras:  Lots of onions, a big sweet onion, a medium sized yellow onion, various dried herbs, onion and garlic granules, plus salt and pepper to taste. Used some of it for the spaghetti and made a lasagna with all but a dab of the remainder.I’d druther it were grilled cheese but we had a last bit of tuna salad we needed to finish.  I make my tomato soup with cloves and allspice and Chinese five spice along with grated carrot and onion so the flavor profile is not suited for an Italian style pasta dish but the half cup of my pasta sauce that was leftover worked great in the soup.  I will probably make a full-on tomato soup with a good bit of Italian sausage in it one of these days because I think that will work.

It’s soup season.  This one is a navy bean soup with cured ham and cute cornbread muffins.  I didn’t do a soak because these beans are small and are good (not old) beans.  Just add water to cover by 2 or 3 inches, add chopped onions, black pepper, your ham, and a couple of bay leaves.  Bring to a boil and then simmer for a few hours.  Toward the end you can add veggies like carrots and celery if you wish.These are the last of the peppers.  The plants were productive pretty much all summer.  I almost snapped a pic of the plants after they were hit by a hard frost but I decided it would be just too sad looking..This was very good but I doesn’t look right.  It’s a roux-thickened, garlic lemon cream sauce over shrimp and angel hair pasta.  I added dried basil and parsley flakes to the sauce as it heated.  Make the roux and stir in heavy cream,  grated Parmesan, the zest and juice of a lemon, season with salt and pepper.
I can never get angel hair pasta to work for me and I tell myself that spaghetti is fine for these things after every disappointment but I forget after a while.
Huevos rancheros is just a killer meal any time of the day.I looked at the pics I took of this rueben after I ate it. One was too blurry to use and this one is not very good.Here’s what those beef odds and ends turned into after a couple of hours. I pulled the meat off the bones and strained the broth. Not sure where I’ll go from here.  Veggie beef and barley?Another bowl of chicken noodle soup. Fettuccine noodles in this one.Here’s a golden oldie. Homer is receiving illustrated instructions on how to use a scratching post.