A Midwest Girl

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2010-10-29T12:45:00.001-04:00

After seven years writing anonymously at midwestgrrl.blogspot.com, I've decided it's time to just be me. So you can read me over here now. I've been blogging there for a little while, so there should be enough stuff to amuse you for a few moments.

I'm happy about the change. I also want to take a moment to say thanks to everyone who comes here to read and to comment. I appreciate it more than you know.

And please keep reading!

I Have Mastered This Basic Food Item

2010-10-05T21:38:00.005-04:00

For a long time I was really horrible at making pasta sauce. Like I almost wish I had pictures of my pasta sauce failures to show you because, oh, they were awful. And yes - you're saying, "But couldn't you just follow a recipe?" Well you would think so! But I was always lacking some random ingredient, like tomato paste or fresh thyme or two quarts of Amarone or something that you do not really in any way need to make pasta sauce, and at that time I was under the impression that not following the recipe TO THE LETTER would ruin everything.

With some help from my boyfriend the kitchen genius I've figured out the easiest route to really good pasta sauce that you can also use on pizza.

So first you want to take an onion, dice it, and put it in a warm skillet or saucepan with a little bit of olive oil. Take a couple cloves of garlic, smash 'em and dice 'em, and throw those in too. This can all happen over low heat. Put some kosher salt, black pepper and a pinch of dried oregano on those and stir everything to coat it in the oil.

When the onions are soft, you'll want to put in your tomatoes. You can use canned ones - the 28oz can of Hunts or whatever will do fine, though if you're in Ohio and would like to support a localish company then you can use Gia Russa brand.

I personally use these:

These six-pound cans of San Marzano tomatoes are less than $4 at Costco. When I'm ready to open the can I just portion out what I don't use into freezer bags and freeze them for another time. We get 5-6 portions from each can, and each portion is enough to make sauce for a couple of pizzas or to sauce a decent amount of pasta.

You can also use fresh tomatoes, naturally. Dice them and get the seeds out. And actually ideally you should blanch them and peel the skins off, so if you don't want to bother with that then...it's can time.

So throw the tomatoes in the pot and turn the heat up to medium. At this point I add some dried basil and perhaps a bit more salt and pepper.

We buy huge quantities of dried herbs at Gallucci's.

Wait, let me get a close-up on those prices.

At these prices you can use allllll the basil and oregano you like and never, ever worry about running out. Look at you with your oregano, using it like a fancy rich person who has so much oregano!

(I also bought a quart of dried marjoram for fifty-nine cents.)

Now that everything is simmering away, you can stick an immersion blender into your sauce and puree it. If you don't have an immersion blender, then I really feel sorry for you but you can use a food processor or regular blender to achieve desired sauce consistency. It just gets a little more messy.

After you get the consistency you like, taste your sauce and add salt or pepper or more herbs as necessary. But really, you're done.

Now you have mastered this basic food item!

Pumqueen

2010-09-28T13:00:00.003-04:00

Last night I made a pumpkin roll. I don't like pumpkin pie very much (texture issues) but I do love other pumpkin stuff, like pumpkin bread and cookies and donuts. Have you ever been to the Circleville Pumpkin Show? There's still time to plan your trip. Just please don't call it a "pumpkin festival." I went to college near-ish to Circleville and it is the pumpkin SHOW not pumpkin FESTIVAL. And truly, seeing a 1,600-pound pumpkin in the flesh is a show you won't soon forget. You can get almost anything pumpkin at the pumpkin show...I've had pumpkin donuts, pumpkin brittle, pumpkin beer, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin pizza...you will be heartily sick of pumpkin if you eat all these things at the show but if you take some home and spread the gluttony around a little you'll be all right. I waited in line for 45 minutes to get those pumpkin donuts and it was 100% worth it.

On the Pumpkin Show website you can peruse the gallery of past Pumpkin Queens. The 30s, 40s and 50s are magical and there is a particularly wonderful period in the 70s and 80s when the Pumpkin Queens were photographed inside the silhouette of a ghostly oblong pumpkin.

Anyway: pumpkin roll. Pumpkin roll is probably one of my favorite fall desserts, but given my history of cakes served in a rolled structure (see: one unbelievably disastrous experience with buche de noel) I've been reluctant to make it myself. It turned out all right, but I don't have a proper 15x10 jelly roll pan so I baked it in the bottom of a 13x9 cake pan and it was a little thick. So the sides are broken. But it tastes wonderful. So if I invite you over for tea and pumpkin roll you will just have to politely ignore how ugly it looks.

I'd love to be able to show you some new pictures of our continuing work in the apartment, but right now there's a blanket tacked up over the bedroom windows and we don't have our new living room furniture yet. We finally got the fabric we selected for the couch after an EPIC go-round with JoAnn's, so that's being upholstered now; also there is the matter of a mid-century armchair and a couple of other things. We did buy a rug for the living room, which was exciting. It was the first grown-up type purchase I have made at Home Depot and now the living room looks a bit more home-like. Also, I do have new blinds for the bedroom but my only drill bit broke when I was trying to hang them, so the progress of that operation now depends on me stopping at the E. 200th Street Home Depot after work and I DON'T WANNA. Everyone there has always been pretty helpful but once I'm that close to home I'm fully finished dealing with the Outside World.

What else? Well I picked up the new MacBook Pro on Friday night after work. I do love that you can order stuff online at Micro Center and they will just set it aside for you, so you can breeze right past the checkout line and pick up your brand new delicious lickable computer. You think I'm lying about wanting to lick it but the fact of the matter is I LOVE IT. I still love my iBook, too, and it is going to enjoy a glorious retirement as a backup machine. I know this type of consumer experience is highly case-by-case but every Mac I've bought has been rock solid. Plus I have Photo Booth now which means I can take terrifying pictures where it looks like my boyfriend is a demon that's eating my head. Which is so obviously the reason to save for a large technology purchase.