Taking Chances

I'm going to be completely obnoxious and brag about myself. And the worst part is that most of you probably won't be impressed by this at all. But for me, this is kind of a big deal. Do you mind humoring me by pretending to be impressed?

I made spaghetti sauce. From scratch. Without a recipe. And it actually turned out pretty good.

Now if you know me at all, you know that I am NOT a chef. And I never do anything without a recipe. If I don't have a decent (and easy to follow) recipe, then the food may as well not exist for all I can tell. So this was stepping outside my comfort zone on all kinds of levels. And to be perfectly honest, for all the people out there who have told me that home-made spaghetti sauce is so easy to make, I've always been pretty happy with the store bought kind. (Not only am I not a chef, I am also not much of a gourmet consumer, either. It turns out.) It would never have occurred to me to make spaghetti sauce from scratch.

It all started when I stepped outside to talk to my neighbor. She was gardening, and I wanted to thank her for watering my own garden while we were away. My neighbor, Margie, is a great talker. I'm a pretty good talker, but this woman puts me to shame. In the course of our conversation, she mentioned that I'd had one really big zucchini growing in my garden, so she'd gone ahead and made it into spaghetti sauce and even her grandkids liked it. Well, another monster zucchini had grown up since then, so I asked her to repeat what she'd done so I could try it, too. That was the closest thing to a recipe that I got.

So here's how it worked. I peeled and seeded the zucchini (did you know that when you let them get too big, their seeds get too big, too? I thought they just stopped growing at the size you find them at the grocery store! But this thing was a foot long and some of the seeds were the same size as watermelon seeds-- icky!). I sliced it up, and threw it in the crock pot with a can of diced tomatoes, a diced onion, and some Italian seasonings. I had no idea how much to put in, so I went with a teaspoon. It felt like a good safe amount. Then I added some salt and garlic powder, and then on a whim (remembering how my mother-in-law doctors up store-bought spaghetti sauce), I added some sugar, too.

After letting it sit cooking all day, it occurred to me that I had sliced the zucchini, but I probably wanted it diced or even minced. So I scooped it all out of the crock pot and mashed it up with a potato masher and then put it back in. Nice. I told you I wasn't much of a cook! After letting it cook for a few more hours, Craig and I both sampled a bite and were pleasantly surprised that it tasted all right.

With that approval, I decided it was worth adding meat to the mix, so after church today I browned hamburger and added that to the mix. But then it looked too much like a load of meat with some stuff added in and not enough like sauce, so I added a can of tomato sauce and a little more Italian seasonings and let it all heat up again. And voila! Put it on top of noodles with a little Parmesan cheese and it was pretty dang good!

I liked Craig's reaction best: "I'm not sure if this sauce is really this good or if it's just because I've been fasting all day, but this is tasting really good to me." The lesson here is obvious: always try new recipes on Fast Sundays. They'll be a hit no matter what!

Anyway, for those of you out there who actually know something about cooking, feel free to add your suggestions for making it even better. I'm pretty sure my garden will be producing plenty more zucchini before the summer is over so I'll have plenty to experiment on. And if you're here in Manassas and want a zucchini to try it out yourself, just let me know!