Perfect Spaghetti Sauce

I was making spaghetti for dinner tonight and for once actually kept track of all the stuff I was throwing into it. In the process, I think I have perfected spaghetti sauce. I LOVE this sauce. Even my picky kid likes it. It is chunky, thick, and doesn't all end up left on your plate when the noodles are gone (unless you're like me and put on WAY more sauce than necessary just so you have some to scoop up with your bread). It is SO easy, and it is all about '1'. Here it is:

1 pound lean ground beef
1 medium onion
1 Tbsp minced garlic (about 6 cloves)

1 can (14 oz) diced tomatoes
1 can (14 oz) tomato sauce
1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
1 can mushrooms (size depends on how much you like mushrooms, I use a small one)
1 can black olives (again, size depends on how much you like olives, I use a 15 oz can of whole olives and slice 'em up).
1 Tbsp mixed Italian seasoning (or 1 tsp oregano, 1 tsp basil, and 1 dash of each sage and marjoram.
1 bay leaf
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp sugar

Cook ground beef, onion, and garlic over medium high heat in a skillet until meat is cooked through and onion is translucent.

While meat is cooking, combine remaining ingredients into a 2 qt saucepan on low.

When meat mixture is cooked through, drain any fat and add to saucepan.

Allow to simmer on low for at least 1 hour (I try to go at least 3 hours). Remove bay leaf before serving.


I use this sauce for spaghetti, lasagna, baked ziti, and even for pizza sauce if I don't add the meat. It freezes excellently and is a favorite of everyone in my house.

Rite of passage

So this week I went through a rite of passage, an age-old tradition that I am told every parent is put through by each of their young children. My sweet, wonderful little boy.... gave himself a hair cut.

I’m a sharecropper

Last year, I had a pitiful little garden with tomatoes, potatoes, and a bit of garlic. I have a tiny backyard and my usable garden space last year was about 3 x 6. Yesterday, we move 3 rose bushes, which may or may not survive at this point, and doubled our available garden space to about 3 x 12. In this space I plan to plant 2 or 3 tomato plants and attempt jalapeno and Anaheim peppers.

Last fall, I mentioned to my mom that I would really like to grow more of my own food for a variety of economic, environmental, and safety reasons, not to mention the pure satisfaction of it. She offered up a corner of her lot that if we participated in tending, we could share in the bounty.

Last week we staked out the proposed boundary of the garden and I drew up a “map.” Part of the area was previously a vegetable garden that has not been used in 2-3 years. She already has rhubarb, artichoke, blueberries, and marionberries established nearby as well. Here is the map:

The front is 32 feet wide and the left side is 27 feet long. The funky triangle on the right side is where the marionberries are. There is a 4 x 12 raised bed that was there; it has been temporarily moved and we haven’t decided where to put it.

We will have to fence the whole thing to keep out the larger animals… but haven’t figured out the best way to keep out the rabbits. These suckers are ruthless. They’ll crawl under or though most wire fencing. They’ve even chewed through a chicken wire fence before. They’re pretty fearless too. Dogs don’t faze them. One of the neighbors was throwing rocks to scare one away and it didn’t even move until she accidentally hit it.

The planning goes on. We’ve laid black plastic to try to kill off the sod before we till in about a month. In 2 to 3 weeks, we’ll start tomatoes and peas indoors. We also plan to grow pole beans, corn, broccoli, sweet peppers, potatoes, cucumber, zucchini, lettuce, carrots, spinach, onion, garlic, pumpkins, and squash. The seed catalogs are on order, and now we have nothing to do but wait…

Here are some photos of the garden area as it is now:

This is standing at the marionberries, looking toward the southwest corner of the garden. The bush at the back, behind the frame for the raised bed, is a HUGE rosemary bush. The garden will end at the brick retaining wall at the back. The artichokes and rhubarb will come up just to the left of the rosemary.


This is standing in the front, near the rosemary, looking down the 'L' The garden will end a few feet before the woodpile at the back (the thing that looks like plywood being supported by a pallet).


In addition to the obvious rewards of growing our own food, I also hope to use the garden to teach Ethan about plants and seed germination as well as healthy eating.

Photo Studio

I'm an aspiring photographer, a newbie, an amateur at best, particularly when it comes to still life and portraits. I prefer landscapes and nature, as evidenced by my "portfolio."

I enjoy photographing my yarn as well as my finished knits and other craft projects, but my lighting is always bad. I forget to take them when the light is best or just snap the photo to get it over with and always feel like I could have done better.

In an attempt to improve my skills and give myself the tools to learn more about indoor photography, I decided to build myself a mini studio/light box. It is definitely not for portraiture, but smaller objects like skeins of yarn. It still needs some work, but for about $10 worth of materials it is a good start. I built a 2 x 2 x 2 cube with 20 feet of 1/2" PVC, 4 3-way joints, and 4 90-degree elbows.

I opted not to have a complete cube, with pipe on all four sides of the bottom, so I could use poster board or similar materials for the bottom if I wished without the cardboard bowing and with less pipe to worry about being exposed.

For today's purposes, I used a king-sized white bed sheet that I already had, and draped it over the cube, tucking it around the pipe as best I could.

Eventually, I plan to buy heavier cotton fabric and make custom panels that attach with velcro around the pipe. This would help with the problem of the wrinkles you can see all over my sheet and allow me to use different colors if I want.

I borrowed some lighting from my parents, but they are basically just simple shop lights you can buy at Home Depot or Lowe's with daylight spectrum bulbs. The ones I used were 65 watts each, but I'll probably go up to 100 watts when I replace them. The hardest part of this whole process was finding something to attach the lights to that was close enough and stable enough, which is why I want brighter bulbs.

Here are some examples of my first attempts at studio lighting. I did have to adjust the tint on these, as I apparently had my white balance set wrong, but otherwise, they are unedited.
Mickey:

Hand-knit mitten:

"Lavendar Gatherer" Santon from southern France:

Inaugural Color Walk

In an effort to find fun ways to incorporate lessons into daily activities, I've instituted what I call a "Color Walk." Ethan gets to pick a color and then we go out for a walk at our favorite place, Washington Park (it is a 2.2 mile paved loop but we take the shortcut so its closer to 1.75 miles) and take photos of everything we find in the chosen color. This allows me to get out and get some exercise while giving him something to do along the way that holds his interest.

For our first color walk, Ethan chose black. Here is a sampling of some of the things we found:

My glove

Ethan's pants and shoes.

A speed bump.

Rocks down on the beach.

A trail sign.

A One-way sign.

And last, but not least... we saw two different families of black-tail deer. It is pretty common to see them though I think there are only 2 or 3 families in this park. The first doe we saw had one fawn. The second had her twins.
Sorry about the quality on the last one, but it was taken through the windshield of my car.

Happy New Year!

To wrap up 2008,here are a few random statistics from this year:

I uploaded 658 photos into Flickr.

I used more than 4 pounds of butter in my holiday baking.

I completed 51 knit and crochet projects. This does not include completed afghan squares that are not yet an afghan but it does include:

10 washcloths/dishcloths.
6 pair of felted slippers.
5 bracelets.
4 bunny rabbits.
4 scarves.
3 pair of socks.
2 pair of baby socks.

Do you make New Year's Resolutions? My goal for 2008 was to learn to knit and it was the first time I've ever made good on my resolutions. My resolutions for 2009 include getting back into the habit of exercising regularly, knitting my first adult-sized sweater, and knitting lace.

Here's wishing you all the best in the coming year. Have an enjoyable but safe night. I'll be at home knitting and watching movies, cuz that is what you do when you have a 4 year old, New Year's Eve falls on a weeknight, and grandma is out of town.

A Plague Upon Our House

My baking, and therefore blogging about it, came to an abrupt end early this week when Ethan came down with a nasty stomach bug. Naturally, as a thank you for cuddling him, babying him, and washing his sheets at midnight... he passed the bug on to me. He recovered for a day and then relapsed so we were miserable together, right up to Christmas Day. We were able to spend the day with family, assuming we'd been sick so long, we couldn't possibly be contagious anymore. Though, I suppose I should look at it from the positive side... I didn't gain any extra weight from stuffing myself on Christmas dinner and sweets or over indulging on wine, because I just couldn't stomach it. I was hoping to share a couple more cookie recipes, but I guess this means I can save them for next year.

On the knitting/crocheting front, I did manage to finish all but one of my gifts. On top of the things I blogged about previously, I managed to finish one more pair of slippers, a wrap, a washcloth, bath mitt, afghan, and a headband. The one thing I didn't finish was a scarf for my sister. For some reason, now I'm having trouble getting back to it. It is the day after Christmas and I don't want to knit! My mom ordered a volume of the Barbara Walker Treasury for me as a Christmas gift and Cliff gave me a gift certificate to the yarn shop, so I'm definitely well armed.

The snow is finally melting but the wind is picking up. The snow level is supposed jump up and we're supposed to have flooding by next week. We just can't win when it comes to weather this month.

So, I'm off to force myself to work on the scarf. If I manage to avoid it, I'll be uploading photos from Christmas...