Italian soup

Gosh.

I didn't mean to leave you hanging with your leftover spaghetti sauce for so long; sorry!!

I intended to write up the recipe the next time we had spaghetti;

we always have about a quart left.

But the next time we had spaghetti, we didn't have salad,

and besides leftovers for Tyler's lunch, we ate every bit of it.

The next time, Tony and Kacy popped in and ate with us, so, no leftovers again.

The next time after that, we did have leftovers,

and I did make soup,

but for whatever reason, didn't have time to write down the process.

Since Master is getting all up in arms about my lack of posting of late,

and we had Italian Soup for dinner last night,

well,

I figured it was high time to share.

Like most of my 'recipes', it's not an exact science, more of a method...

Italian Soup

(I cut up the veggies as I go, and add them to the pot, giving it a stir with each addition. If you are not a fast slicer and dicer, or if you just want to do your prep work early, cut everything ahead of time and just dump it all in a bowl or bag 'til you're ready to cook)

Place a stockpot on your favorite burner set to medium heat and pour in a glug or two of olive oil.

To your warm oil, add 2-4 carrots, diced

1/2 - 1 whole onion, diced 

1/2 - 1 whole bell pepper, diced

a yellow squash, you got it, diced

and a couple of small zucchinis - one diced, one grated, unless your kids admit to liking zucchini, in which case, you can dice both.

a handful of parsley, chopped as small as you can get it

If mushrooms are on sale, they make a delicious addition, especially if you saute them in butter and garlic salt first. 

If you don't have a child particularly averse to spinach in soup,

go ahead and add a few handfuls of chopped spinach, too.

I, personally, don't even notice the addition of spinach, but Josiah, who really is a pretty good eater, and eats spinach raw just fine, 

can not stand the feel of spinach in soup.

I get that.

Since I am not overly fond of torturing my children for the heck of it,

I choose to feed my family spinach in other ways.

Back to your soup.

Continue to cook your veggies, stirring occasionally.

Throw in some of your Italian Seasoning mix and a few cloves of garlic, crushed.

Also a bit of seasoning mix.

When your veggies are mostly cooked, increase heat to high and add about 6 c of chicken broth.

When it's good and boiling, reduce heat back to medium and add your leftover sketti sauce.

Simmer and stir and stir and simmer.

Taste and add more spices if needed, and maybe some salt, too.

It'll be ready after about 15 minutes of simmering, but if you aren't ready to eat yet,

just reduce the heat and leave it simmering 'til you are.

Now.

As is, the soup is good, but nothing terribly memorable;

add the following toppings, though 

(I've listed them in the order of importance) 

and you take it up several notches.

Even Lily, who has been an awful eater lately, loves it, which is quite a feat these days, unless sugar is involved.

sliced pepperoncinis, with juice

cottage cheese

bacon bits

grated monterey jack

cabbage leftover from your sketti dinner, chopped small

hemp seeds

Oh ~ all those scraps from your veggies? Don't throw them away. 

Well, you can toss the carrot peels and the stem from the pepper,

but the onion, carrot, and squash ends

put in a bag or other container and stick it in your freezer.

Add other veggie scraps to it (but no pepper scraps) and I'll tell you soon(ish) what you can do with 'em.

perfect spaghetti

Now, you may be wondering how it is that we even eat spaghetti,

seeing that we don't eat wheat.

My friend asked me that very question recently when she asked what we were having for lunch after church one day 

and I replied,"Spaghetti."

I told her we eat it on shredded cabbage instead of pasta. 

(I know. 

It sounds gross. It's not; it's actually very good)

She said, "Then it's not spaghetti. Spaghetti refers to the pasta."

So, all this talk about spaghetti,

 is,

 I guess,

  technically 

talk about marinara sauce (with ground beef)

that we happen to eat over raw very thinly-sliced cabbage instead of long skinny noodles

but tastes suspiciously like the spaghetti of my memories.

Needless to say, Tyler was more than happy to tweak the recipe a bit,

'cause it meant more spaghetti to taste test.

And if he could get it to where I actually liked it,

well, he'd be in spaghetti heaven.

The last time he'd made the sauce,

we decided to reduce the seasoning mix,

so scribbled out the previous measurement on the bag

and wrote the new one.

So the next time I made the sauce accordingly.

(Hey! It just dawned on me; I've made the spaghetti every time except for once,

since he came up with and perfected the recipe. What gives?!)

It was simmering on the stove

and I gave it a stir as I walked by.

And then I tasted some.

And I said, "mmmm".

And then I realized,

I had just mmmm'd spaghetti.

Which brings us back to where I started this whole thing...

to be continued.

again.

just kidding :-)

And now, the recipe.

I have yet to figure out the measurements for doubling / tripling/ quadrupling....

It can be done quite easily, I'm sure, converting Tablespoons to cups and partial tsps to Tbls,

but I've been in a rush each time I've had to make up a batch of the seasoning,

so it was quicker to just make it as it's written on the crumpled paper bag Tyler brought the spices home from OFF in, 

than to think and multiply to convert....

Italian Seasoning Mix for people who don't like Thyme

(and people that do...)

9 TBS basil

9 TBS parsley

4 TBS oregano

3 TBS garlic powder

1 TBS onion powder

1 TBS rosemary (ground)

3/4 tsp black pepper

3/4 tsp red pepper flakes

3/4 tsp ground fennel

Mix 'em all together, give 'em a whir in the grinder (or a blender) and store in a jar.

(our spice grinder is just a dedicated coffee grinder from a yard sale :-)

To make Tyler's Spaghetti Sauce,

in a large pot, brown 2-3 lbs. ground beef (round or chuck) with a bit of garlic powder and season-all

While it's browning,

dice an onion and a bell pepper (half is okay if they're pricey, but a whole one is better)

and throw them in the pot when the beef's about 1/2 done.

When the beef is thoroughly cooked, 

add 1 big can (102 oz) crushed tomatoes

and 2 TBS of the magic spaghetti seasoning mix..

You can add a clove or two of crushed garlic, or not.

Let it simmer over low heat for at least 20 minutes if you're in a rush,

but it's best simmered 3-4 hours if you get it going early enough.

If that's just wayyy too much sauce for you,

reduce the meat (duh) and onions & peppers,

and mix 1/2 Tbs of your italian seasoning mix with a 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes.

If I were you, though, I'd go ahead and make the big batch,

'cause I'll be back before long,

to tell you what you can do 

with the leftovers.

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...

some spaghetti

I sent Tyler a text that said,

"I just took a bite from the pot and said, 'mmmm'." 

"It was spaghetti sauce!"

To fully appreciate that, you need to understand something.

My mom made delicious spaghetti sauce when I was growing up.

In fact, it's what we had to eat the first time Tyler came over for dinner.

I'm not sure if I made it, or she did.

Either way - it was the same yummy sauce; I made it just like she did.

Tyler wasn't sure he'd like my mom's cooking, so he (unbeknownst to me at the time) grabbed a burger on his way over.

His eyes about popped out of his head when my mom served him up a Miller male sized portion.

He couldn't have eaten that much normally,

but having just had a burger, well, things didn't look good for him....

I don't remember if he ate it all or not

and actually, that part of the story is irrelevant.

When I was pregnant with Lana,

I could not stand the smell of cooked tomatoes.

Which was quite a problem, seeing that tomato based foods were pretty cheap

and we were incredibly poor.

So I cooked with tomato sauce and such anyways

and sometimes, I even managed to get down a few bites.

At some point not long after Lana was born,

we'd discovered that it was cheaper to buy jarred or canned spaghetti sauce than make my own.

Since it was all nasty in my opinion (even though the smell no longer made me sick, there was still a negative association...)

 and Tyler just loved spaghetti, period,

well, it was a no-brainer.

We started buying pre-made spaghetti sauce.

We could have a meal of spaghetti for $2 if we didn't use meat;

$1 for the sauce, and $ .50 each for pasta and a can of diced tomatoes.

As kids grew (and became more plentiful) we just added another jar of sauce and more pasta.

When we switched to whole grains, it was slightly more expensive, since the pasta was $1 a box...

Occasional, we had hamburger  or ground turkey in it,

but Lana preferred it meatless. 

Since she rarely stated preferences,

I choose to fix it the way she liked it.

Once she married, we added meat to the sauce more often than not.

And once I discovered that Tyler really didn't care for ground turkey in it,

I never added it again - only ground beef.

And every single time we ate spaghetti for dinner,

which was probably at least 3x's amonth, since everyone else loved it

and it was a cheap healthy meal - what with all that whole grain pasta,

I hated it.

Whenever possible, I planned to have it when I would be gone at dinner time.

Seeing that I don't really go gallivanting around all that much,

I didn't get to skip out on the sketti very often.

Then came the great food upheaval of 2011

and we re-examined our eating habits again.

Now, even though we ate in a way we thought was healthy, 

and I'd known for years that they put sugar or HFCS in spaghetti sauce,

I overlooked it.

It was cheap and easy.

But with knowledge comes responsibility, so as we learned more,

we adjusted more.

The cheap Aldi spaghetti sauce had to go.

Tyler found some jarred sauce with just a smidge of added sugar - no HFCS - that they liked okay,

but it was no longer a cheap option, especially when you consider we needed 3 jars...

But of course, I still hated spaghetti night.

Mind you, I didn't carry on like a martyr or anything;

I'm sure some of the kids didn't even know I didn't like spaghetti,

but Tyler knew.

And he made it his mission to come up with a spaghetti sauce that I would like,

and preferably be inexpensive, too.

to be continued...