Meat Sauce

For well over a year now, my husband and I have alternated responsibility for meals by week.  It's great.  Every other week I don't have to plan meals, go grocery shopping, or do much cooking.  It's wonderful.  We recently decided that we each need to expand our cooking repertoires and that we should to attempt to try one new recipe a week. 

Alas and alack, it's my week.  And like every other week, I am not in the mood to figure out what we're going to eat this week or go to the grocery store.  In fact, today I've taken two naps (one intentional, one not so much), done some reading (The first third of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has been amazing), watched an episode of Desperate Housewives, and all and all pretty much been a complete slut.  No, not that kind of slut.  This kind of slut:  When this woman answers the door, she shrugs without remorse at her unkempt apartment and declares, "I''m such a slut" (Kingsolver, Barbara. High Tide in Tucson).


And while even on my best days I will never be Bree Van de Kamp*, I usually try to take the extra time available on the weekend to make meals that require a little more effort. Yesterday I made blueberry muffins** for breakfast and oven-friend chicken for dinner.  Not so much today. Today, I went so far to threaten a dinner of pasta and sauce from a jar.


But even I wanted something more elaborate than jarred spaghetti sauce, so I pulled the some ground pork, ground beef, and ground chicken from the freezer and decided to concoct a meat sauce based on the recipe for the Simplified Lasagna Bolognese from Cooks Illustrated: More Best Recipes cookbook.  Basically, I put in twice as much pork as the recipe called for, swapped the veal for chicken, added garlic, oregano, and basil.  Served it up with some whole wheat thin spaghetti, salad, and bread.  


I don't know if that necessarily counts as a new recipe given that I've made the lasagna before, but hey, at least it didn't come out of a jar. Which is good. I'll need that jar of pasta sauce for Wednesday or Thursday's dinner.

*I can't stand the sort of sterile household that Bree epitomizes and promotes.  I like my home to have that lived in feel.


**The husband lost some valuable points by complaining about the lack chocolate chips in said blueberry muffins.