tomatoes – Bill Gibson, II

I had a hankering (something less than a hankering) for some homemade spaghetti sauce and pasta. I happened to be in Wegman’s in Raleigh about a week ago and they had their own brand of spaghetti sauce starters for only about $1.19 a jar. I decided to try it, but currently I like RAO’s starter sauces, but they are about $9 a jar. RAOs is a glass jar and the Wegman’s jar was plastic. That doesn’t matter.

I found the flavor of the Wegman’s sauce to be like the $1 a can starters I had bought repeatedly through the years. Delmonte was one company that made these starters. At some point, one of the companies started canning their sauce in a smaller can. Like what happened to the single serving sizes of Yogurt. I think the single serving size of yogurt is currently about 3.5 ounces. But maybe 20 years ago the sizes were maybe 5.5 or 6 oz. plastic containers. Of course you can continue to sell your product at the same price, if you actually provide less product to the customer. As long as the customer doesn’t realize the portion size has been reduced, everybody is a happy camper. And, not too long ago, maybe a couple of years now, Food Lion started selling a smaller size of sweet bell pepper (yellows, oranges, reds) for $1.48. It’s been $1.48 for several years now, but if you paid attention, the produce is now considerably smaller in size. If you want to buy a sweet bell pepper that was the size it was, maybe 3 or 4 years ago, you wouldn’t pay $1.48 but probably over $2 per pepper. *Price fixing? Well a sweet bell pepper at Food Lion and Walmart costs the same, $1.48 and both veggies are sized about the same (the smaller version).

So I used half a jar of the Wegman’s sauce, and added about half a can of the Fire Roasted Tomatoes from Hunts. It’s here where I mention again that it is difficult to cook for one when you are making homemade spaghetti sauce, or several types of soups (especially vegetable). For the vegetable soup you open a 15 oz. can each of green beans, corn, garden peas, tomatoes, chop some carrots, dice an onion and brown some ground beef (I like ground beef rather than stew beef chunks in my vegetable-beef soup.) add some Chicken Broth & water, and several seasonings like garlic powder, ground pepper & salt. Maybe even throw in a little margarine or even bacon grease for more flavor. But adding all of those makes the final product enough for maybe six servings, and unless you freeze some of that, you end up throwing half of it away. And that’s even if your soup was especially delicious. *I have also tried only using half a can of each of the above veggies and freezing the rest all mixed together in a Rubbermaid container. Still the frozen veggies usually get lost over time and I open a new can of each item when I start to make another helping of soup.

And the thought just came to me. If in season, I chop up some okra and add them in. And I add some orzo.

For the homemade spaghetti sauce I brown some ground beef, chop up some onion (regular not sweet, because… “any onion is sweet once it hits the heat.”) and add a can of Hunt’s Fire Roasted Tomatoes and some Chicken Broth. Garlic powder, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, sweetener (maybe Agave Nectar), and fennel seeds (licorice flavor as in Italian Sausage). If I am in the mood, I may add a small can of mushroom bits. *Chicken Broth? I’ve found (as has been mentioned on Americas Test Kitchen) that even if the recipe calls for a beef product, Chicken Broth provides a more rounded flavor than Beef Broth. **I have in the past (maybe only once) tried using three different meats: ground beef, Italian sausage and pork sausage (or ground lamb). I couldn’t tell enough difference to justify the extra cost of three meats, so ground beef is my usual.

Instead of using Angel Hair pasta, as I normally do, this time I bought a good sized eggplant and shredded it. Salted it and then squeezed out the moisture. Sauteed the shredded eggplant, let it cool and then mixed the eggplant with flour (Bisquick), an egg, and some spices like thyme, savory, garlic powder, etc. I normally do not like to fry anything in a large amount of oil, but I had some long-time unused Canola oil and I poured about a quarter inch of oil, heated it up in a frying pan and after it was hot put several large patties of the eggplant mixture in to cook. They browned fairly quickly, and I turned them over and viola. This turned out pretty well. The eggplant fritters had enough flavor to be pleasantly delicious with the homemade spaghetti sauce. *Through the years I’ve repeatedly failed at fixing delicious fried eggplant at home. But shredding it, and making a fritter worked.

I use the Hunt’s Fire Roasted Tomatoes when I am making homemade salsa also. I put a can of the tomatoes in my chopper, add some onion and sweet bell & jalapeno & pablano peppers (sometimes roasting them first for more flavor). If I have more exotic peppers such as a Biquinho, Brazillian Starfish, or Trinidad Perfume they will go in also. *I tried these three peppers a couple of years ago and added them to my seafood chowder and they were great. But, this past season I couldn’t get some of them at the State Farmer’s Market in Raleigh. Maybe next year. **I asked repeatedly about these.

A “kick” I am currently on is the Spicy Chili Crisp that I originally bought for my stir fry concoctions. I buy this from Walmart locally: Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp Hot Chili Oil (also available at Amazon.com) It only costs about $4 for a small jar. It is crunchy but adds a bunch of flavor to a stir fry.

I hadn’t made a stir fry in a while but added some of this oil mixture to my latest. And, while I was eating the stir fry, which turned out really well, I noticed a few peanuts in the mix. I wondered where they came from because I knew I didn’t add them. I even questioned if they weren’t peanuts but maybe the peas from the Sugar Snap peas I had also added. Eventually, I found these peanuts had come from the Spicy Chili Crisp, and a little of that is addictive. I’ve even added some to some Dukes Mayo and put it on a pastrami sandwich, with a slice of sweet onion, and it worked! It was different, delicious and a keeper.

A note. I finished off a previous version of the Spicy Chili Crisp, but had already bought some more. I noticed that the flavor between the two was different. Still enjoyable, but different, so maybe the peppers they use, or how long they cook the mix causes some flavor variations.

[NOTE 11/10/24]: Tried a few different flavors together for breakfast this morning: 1 egg in microwave, seasoned with some of the Spicy Chili Crisp, some chopped onion & sweet bell pepper and some shredded Mexican blend cheese. A couple of slices of polenta, heated in the microwave. Half of a small avocado. Three slices of bacon. [end NOTE]

I haven’t made spaghetti sauce in a long time, but in the past, I made it quite often, probably every two or three weeks, and each time I made it there would be at least enough for three meals. I just haven’t needed the extra carbs of the spaghetti noodles, and I can’t imagine substituting zucchini noodles for actual pasta. *I do think I had some zucchini pasta with chicken at the Olive Garden, and wasn’t too thrilled when I found that the cheap special came with the zucchini noodles.

Olive Garden is one of those restaurants that I’ve completely stopped going to, although since my last visit to Dr. Norem (quarterly checkup), I haven’t been eating at very many restaurants. I’ve even pared my weekly visits to Taco Bell down to almost none. A day or so ago when I was preparing my schedule for meals for the next week, I thought of stopping by Taco Bell to buy either a Beef Burrito Supreme or a Crunchy Taco, but when I looked at the calories in just one taco, I decided to not go there,… and I love the flavors of their burrito supremes & tacos & bean burritos.

I haven’t been to the Rainbo in many, many months. Nor have I visited R.K.’s, or Zorbas. I’ve even made my lunch and took it with me twice when I was going up to Cary, Morrisville & Raleigh shopping. Ate twice in the Wegman’s parking lot and think I had a Greek Salad both times. The sesame crackers had become stale the second time, and they keep their crunch a long time. Probably should have put them in a plastic bag instead of actually on top of the salad, in the Tupperware container. Haven’t been to Golden Corral in way more than a year. I had been to the Pizza Hut in Lillington (just across the Cape Fear River) for their lunch buffet several times, but since my doctor’s visit, not once. I will have to say that their pizza and salad needed something, but I’m not sure what.

But this time I started with the intent of making only enough for one, or two meals. Quickly, I realized that you almost have to prepare spaghetti sauce for at least two meals. I had 4 oz. of ground beef, and diced a very small onion, some chopped red bell pepper, added half a can of diced fire roasted tomatoes to about a third of a jar of Rao’s Marinara Sauce, and a small can of mushroom bits & pieces. Italian seasoning, marjoram, bay leaves, fennel seeds, red pepper flakes, onion flakes, garlic powder, ground Indian pepper, some dried parsley flakes, S&P, very little chicken stock, Agave Nectar and Splenda. I can see that this is going to provide me with two generous portions of spaghetti sauce, and I am planning to sauté some zucchini and add that to the pasta & spaghetti sauce (at the end). *Recall that fennel seeds are in some Italian sausage and provide a licorice flavor.

I have been to Helen’s Kitchen for breakfast a couple of times, when I visit Hubert & Jacksonville and Mary Ann. And on January 19th, I ate at both Helen’s Kitchen and at Down on Main Street, in “little” Washington, NC. I really, really, really enjoyed the shrimp burger with coleslaw, fried okra and cocktail sauce. Now, these are exceptions to my current eating patterns. And, if I am successful at getting my A1C below 7 this next doctor’s office visit, I might take a quick trip up to Greensboro, NC to “Sticks -n- Stones” Pizza. I love their Margherita Pizza with some jalapenos. The only other restaurant treat might be a visit to Pharaoh’s Legacy for their Lamb Gyro and Greek Salad, and my last visit there (about January 17th) I even carried my own Greek Salad and at the meal out in my car. But, this did throw my resting blood sugar level way high on January 18th, my & Mary Ann’s birthdays.

My change in eating patterns since shortly before my last checkup have greatly reduced my resting Bgl. And that only went up when I couldn’t refill my Trulicity prescription in a timely manner. I went up about 20 points on average until I got on Rybelsus, and then got Trulicity and started back on it. *I only used about 15 tablets of the Rybelsus because I had started to see things about extreme side effects, and then a commercial about another like product that was including Rybelsus in a law suit.

I left the spaghetti sauce cooking on low on the stove-top as I wrote the above, and when I went to it just now, most of the liquid had cooked out and I had enough for two 2-cup containers (only filling each about 2/3rds full). Fortunately, the sauce was just about perfect, and none of it had burned on the bottom of the pot. Sometimes, especially when I am cooking beans, and specifically those large white butter beans, I leave them and at some point realize that the water has cooked out of the pot and the beans on the bottom have become “scorched.” Although not inedible, the overcooked flavor is not my usual goal.

Both the YM Warranty and the BBC Volga appear to be in port at this time. The Warranty is at the Port of LA, and the Volga is at Douala, Cameroon. You know I am enamoured of the vessel Volga and her vast travels around the World since I first became aware of her, as she pulled into the Port of Morehead City in late November of 2022. If I were ever going to teach World Geography, I would hope to incorporate the travels of such a vessel because, and greatly to my surprise, the Volga, in a year almost completely travelled around the World in both directions. She did travel completely from West to East, and then turned around and almost completed the entire journey for East to West. And since, she has also gone through the Panama Canal, travelling completely down the western coast of South America, and then back up the entire eastern coast of South America, going to the Port of Houston, and then Panama City (USA) and then Jamaica and from there across the Atlantic to Cameroon. When you figure that she has been up to Norway, and over to Gdansk, Poland, and then to the UK, and around past the Straits of Gibraltar, across the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez Canal, down and across to Singapore, up to China and all the way to Japan, I think you should be impresses with this “little” vessel. A Handysize container vessel literally travelling the World.

[NOTE 05/04/24]: Well, I was successful in getting my A1C down to 6.7 for my last visit to Dr. Norem, and I had also lost about 15 lbs. during that time. And I think it was the following week that I took a trip up to Greensboro, NC and had a pizza at Sticks-n-Stones. “I love their Margherita Pizza with some jalapenos.” That pizza was good, but it wasn’t the best I have had there. After looking at this picture, the colors are vibrant, and the ingredients look tasty (and they were), but I noticed that the crust was uneven and gigantic around the edges. I began to think that the chef wasn’t really “into” making my pizza, this time. Different chef, maybe?

After Greensboro, I drove to Burlington, then through Gibsonville, and finally to Mebane before heading back south and home. I stopped at the library and a bookstore in Burlington. I found the downtown section of Gibsonville and they had a neat little small toy train setup, and finally I stopped at a used book store just out of Mebane and the the library in Mebane. I had just missed the used book sale at the Burlington Library, and then was told that the Mebane Library is part of the Burlington system.

I’ve stopped going to Taco Bell altogether, and before I got serious about my A1C & weight, I probably would visit at least once or twice a week. Haven’t been to Golden Corral in many months, and for years when I was working, I would probably visit Golden Corral at least once or twice a week. Covid shut down most buffet restaurants, and I don’t have any buffets that I go out to now. I would visit Mi Casita at least once a week, but haven’t been there in a long while. I still will make a special visit to Pharaoh’s Legacy for a Lamb Gyro, but I now order out and eat in my car. I make a Greek Salad at home and bring it along with me for this lunch.

The last time I went down to Jacksonville to see Mary Ann, I didn’t eat at Helen’s Kitchen. And, at the moment, I can’t remember where I did choose to eat, or maybe, now that I think about it, I ate at home before driving down and then had lunch out at Marakesh with Mary Ann.

[end NOTE]