cook: italian american blate

I can see to the back of the freezer! Even after my husband's run to Costco and the loaf of bread in the freezer. Cooking in my 60s has turned into cooking what I have, including scrips and scraps. Next up I sautéed a small onion and more mashed garlic in olive oil and butter to which I added a can of tomato sauce and the little sauce left in a jar of Rao's (in college, I subsisted on jars of Ragu or Prego). I forgot the 3 Italian sausages in the fridge! I removed their casing and fried and then added to the marinara. Into that pan of Italian sausage drippings and fond, enter the bunch of Swiss chard harvested from the winter garden, where I separated and chopped the stems, sautéing stems first in olive oil and then adding pounded garlic and leaves next and then bone and vegetable broth. And because I've been shopping my pantry drawer, I could see that I still had some imported Italian spaghetti, which I boiled in heavily salted water. Luckily I reserved some of that garlic for sourdough buttered toast.

And I'm able to see too to some parts of the back of the refrigerator and spied the small tub of grated Parmesan as well as the small can of Sicilian lemonade. Above was dinner for a sober curious January, where I wasn't frantically running to the grocery store after work for ingredients for yet another recipe I clipped from the New York Times, but rather automaticity meal prep and cooking. Note: I zhushed this sauce with oregano and thyme and basil--which I do have in my spice drawer almost always. I've decided once my fridge and freezer is nearly empty, I can unplug the refrigerator and do a deep clean. I know I have in the freezer chicken thighs and saw the chicken karaage mix in the pantry drawer. A Japanese dinner to come this weekend.