Bolognese

It's summer time and although I don't automatically think SPAGHETTI, I do think tomatoes. And as much as I love tomatoes, sometimes you just can't eat them fast enough. So although I don't think spaghetti in the summertime, I do think sauce. Pure, tomatoey goodness. With lots of garlic, basil, and a little red wine to make it extra special good. Hmm. I made a bolognese (just a fun Italian way to say meat sauce) last night with tomatoes from the garden. I used a 90/10 ground beef for three reasons... a little less fat than the other stuff, more tasty than turkey, and it was on sale. I cooked the sauce for about an hour, which to be honest, was a lot less time than I would have liked, but I had a busy day and just couldn't get it started earlier. And here's another thing I did that probably isn't very kosher, but I have my reasons... I leave the skin on my tomatoes. That's right, skin, seeds, it all goes in. I chop them all up and it all goes in. I feel like there's gotta be some great nutrition in that skin and I'm not willing to part with it. I usually put in diced zucchini too (shh! Don't tell hubby! I don't think he knows about that part!!) for a little extra kick of vitamins.  The secret to keeping that all a secret? My handy dandy immersion blender. One of my most valued kitchen tools. No tomato skins, no chunks of tomatoes or anything else (in case you didn't know, I hate chunky marinara). Perfection.

You'll probably notice in the picture the grated Parmesan cheese. That's right, the stuff from the can. I love that stuff on pasta with a good meat sauce. Maybe one of these days I'll grow out of it. ;)

We also had cheesy garlic bread with it. Knowing me, you'd probably assume I made my own, and in most cases I would, but the husband actually requested cheesy bread, so I knew he would prefer the frozen texas toast style cheesy bread. You know, the one with too much saturated fat to count. I actually don't care for the stuff myself, but when he specifically requests something, which isn't often, I like to at least try to accommodate him.  Since I don't care for the texas toast stuff, I tried the frozen ciabatta cheese rolls instead. I'll just make my own next time, but they were really pretty good for freezer to oven bread.