more spaghetti

Okay.

So where were we?

Ah, yes ~ I was hatin' on spaghetti and Tyler was determined to change my mind.

In order to come up with a homemade spaghetti sauce that I would enjoy,

we had to first come up with our own seasoning blend,

because neither of us (admittedly, mostly me) were crazy about the Italian seasoning we had in the cabinet.

Tyler spent some time looking at recipes online,

chose one,

and went to Old Fashioned Foods to buy all the spices we'd need.

(Did you know that local health food stores are generally a great place to buy good quality spices at a fraction of what you'd pay for them at the grocery store? Long before we were health nuts - way back when walking into a health food store was liking entering a different planet and I wondered why people thought you shouldn't bathe or brush your hair if you were healthy and we stuck out like sore thumbs, 

what with our clothes actually matching and all - we  bought a lot of our spices from the wide-mouth quart sized jars lining the bulk aisle 

in the old house with uneven floors that was Ozark Natural Foods in downtown Fayetteville.)

Armed with his paper sack of plastic-bagged spices, cheap Walmart spices from the pantry, such as garlic & onion powders, his recipe and measuring spoons, Tyler set out to make The Seasoning.

I'd already told him to not bother buying Thyme;

we'd figured out that was one of the ingredients in Italian seasoning neither of us liked.

Then, we decided that reducing the oregano would be smart, since I'm not crazy about it, either.

(you can see what he was up against?! was it even possible for me to like spaghetti??)

I also insisted suggested that the rosemary be ground prior to adding it to the mix. 

I like the flavor; hate eating the sticks.

We made a few other changes to the recipe, but I forget what all.

When he made the first batch of sauce, I said, "Not bad."

Considering we were talking about spaghetti - that's pretty good,

but he wasn't going for 'not bad', he was going for really good...