Tuesday, September 22, 2009

A Lesson in Fridge Cleaning Madness

So, last week a 'net buddy of mine (the infamous Killie... a nickname you can apparently quite easily pick up when you're name is Kim and you live in Illinois) mentioned she was using some ground beef to make Simple Bolognese for dinner. Who isn't looking for a good way to use some cheap ground beef??


I was also interested in giving the recipe a go after I had two good deals at the deli counter on Saturday.....

MEAT ENDS!!



Those would be nice end bits or "overages" that were cut from the deli meats. And I figured throwing some extra Italian-looking cold cuts into the sauce couldn't be a bad thing.
I was also, very much, looking forward to opening a bottle of wine on Sunday to use some in the sauce, and then enjoy a nice couple of glasses of wine with dinner. Hey, a girl's gotta have some fun.
Sauce base is onions, carrot and celery....


Throw in your ground beef....



(I feel like I should have "ta-DAH!" music for their introduction to the sauce....) Then dump in the chopped meat ends....



One can of crushed tomatoes and one can of dice tomatoes.....


Herbage.....


And then it got whacky. My tomato plants took a decidedly bad turn last month, and I figured I'd dump in the last of my few remaining, sad, tomatoes.



And then I looked around the kitchen and found a pint of cherry tomatoes that was about to go south. So, I halved those and dumped them in. That was the start of the madness.


And although this is supposed to be a "quick" sauce, I actually let mine simmer for a few hours. Hey, it was a Sunday. And the less rushing around dinner time, the better.
About a half hour to go until dinner, I was actually reading the reviews on the FN site and some people mentioned adding mushrooms.
Hey... I had mushrooms to use up, too!

Granted, I wish I would have sauteed them, but it still turned out okay.



Mmmmm..... pretty sauce. And good, too. A nice change from meatballs or Sunday gravy. And not a jar of Prego in sight.

Although, I did learn the hard way that it's a bad idea to give me the mircoplane and a wedge of parmesan cheese after I've already had two REALLY BIG glasses of wine......




D'oh. Oh well. Sometimes you gotta suffer in the kitchen.

2 comments:

Rosie Hawthorne said...

Bolognese is looking really good right now.

And Mr. Hawthorne just made his first pesto. I'm so proud!

Unknown said...

This is really one of those recipes where you have to overlook Giada's head and sometimes kitchen-inappropriate tops.... girl knows her way around a recipe.