| Mrs. 'Boro: It's time for chili or spaghetti |
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By: JEANNE BRAGG, Post Columnist
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Posted: Sunday, November 1, 2009 7:08 am
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Tonight is one of those (rare) fall evenings when it’s easy to know what to cook for dinner.
Chili or spaghetti? Both sound good because we haven’t had either since last winter.
The ingredients for both are practically the same so I can make in separate pots and save the other for tomorrow. I’ll use those leftover ground chicken breasts, with a little frozen ground beef.
Many years ago I worked at State Farm. They sent us home early sometimes because of dangerous weather. When I stopped at Kroger to buy ingredients for dinner the canned vegetable aisle was almost bare. I asked the clerk...”What is the most common item you have had to restock today?” And he said, without batting an eye: “Canned tomatoes.” Every time the weather turns cold I think about canned tomatoes.
I use very few tomatoes in my chili but I use the dickens out of them in my spaghetti.... me and everyone else. Canned tomatoes have been very “acid-y” these days. I think pinch of sugar helps, but doesn’t completely overcome the “sting.”
When I visited my daughter Anne in New York recently we used a pound of ground beef for both chili AND spaghetti and I was alarmed when her grocery story didn’t have the chili mix that I prefer.
Actually, I saw an empty space where the mix should have been. Apparently, in her new neighborhood in New York, like Murfreesboro, others make chili too and they beat us to the shelves. I’ll have to make a note to send Anne some mix the next time I send a package her way.
I noticed tonight that my own spices are dwindling. I have probably had some of them for who-knows-how-many-years and though I try tried to weed some old ones, a little at a time, some are still very tired.
I had no problem tossing out the gargantuan jar of garlic powder: it had almost petrified and is easy to replace. I’ll hit Big Lots or the Dollar Store soon.
I wish Bay Leaves were as easy to find. My neighbor Pat and I used to get them at a wholesale warehouse, but can no longer find them there. The last I bought were from a Penzey’s Spice Retail Store (LOVE those Penzey’s spices). I’ll have to get Anne to get some for me.
Tonight I made a mental promise to write the date a spice was purchased with a Sharpie pen. That will make the “use by” date a little more realistic.
I had no problem combining my “twin” jars of Kitchen Bouquet – one plastic, the other glass. They don’t make the glass ones anymore.
My mother (gone 20 years now) LOVED Kitchen Bouquet. We had only brown gravy at our house. Brown gravy was what she grew up on in “Fa-ginia” (Virginia) and that white kind would ever grace her table.
Every time she used Kitchen Bouquet she filled the jar to the top with water and shook it. Now I do the same. It’s fun to remember your mother in small nostalgic says.
A real dilemma came in trying to decide whether or not to keep the relic...the glass one, since I have that deep seated fondness for all jars glass, but I finally committed it to the recycle bin.
New “what to cook” dilemmas will come soon enough now that it’s dark earlier, colder and dreary.
But a fire in the fireplace will keep away some of the gloom.
Another reason I’m grateful for living in a state where seasons noticeably change.
‘Til next week. |
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