THURSDAY: Spaghetti Night

Last night we faced one of the many conundrums of our eating project. Rashmi wanted to attend a Bollywood dancing class at the yoga studio downtown (that's probably another story in and of itself...) which began at 7 and lasted until 8:30. With limited options for quick meals, we knew this meant we wouldn't eat until after she returned. So what to cook? Like most men faced with some free time in the evening, I chose to spend four hours in the kitchen making pasta from scratch. I've used our new pasta roller for ravioli, but I hadn't experimented with the spaghetti attachment. Pasta making and pasta rolling isn't exactly a science, but I'm still picking up some skills in the area. I worked from a recipe in Bittman's How to Cook Everything - a slight variation of a spaghetti and meatballs recipe called "Spaghetti with Sausage." Mmmm....sausage. Armed with some frozen sausage from Gibson's Farm Fresh Sausage in Union Grove, and a can of tomatoes we put away in late summer, we had all the requisite ingredients for this simple dish, save for that omnipresent ingredient that reminds me daily of the need for better stocking next season - one medium onion. The magical onion seems to be included in just about everything I want to cook, and after our stock ran out in early January, I've been frustrated ever since. But I trudged out into the front yard with a headlamp and came back with some wild onions growing near our mailbox. If you see how overgrown our yard is, please believe that we keep it that way for foraging purposes and not out of laziness...

Wild onions, washed and prepped, go into a skillet of browned sausage. Cook a little longer with the onions, add a can of tomatoes with juices, some salt and pepper, let simmer until the tomatoes break down and get saucy (about 5-10 minutes). Boil the fresh pasta quickly (fresh pasta need only cook for 3-5 minutes), drain, and mix the sauce and pasta together. This makes a pretty heavy and filling dish with lots and lots of leftovers - always a good thing since we consistently eat leftovers from the night before for our lunches. Finally, top with some fresh cheese. We've been out of the heavenly variety offered by Sweet Home Farms since our last trip to the coast in the summer. So, once again, we return to our old standby and what seems like our sponsor for this week: Wrights Dairy Aged Cheddar.