mmmmmmmmm winey food

Okay so here it is. My beloved husband starts his new job tomorrow. We're all very excited about his success. I was going to make some sort of homemade bolognaesey situation, and I was determined to use lots of herbs and spices to keep it delicious, but base the meal on real ingredients, largely vegetables, home cooked. nothing processed, no adding anything.

The other thing is, we opened the nice bottle of red wine that I got in Santa Barbara and so this blog is going to be somewhat ill-formed.

I wanted to make some sort of tomato-based sauce with garlic and paprika. I wanted to use minced/ground chicken instead of beef to keep the calories low but the protein high. I could not find a recipe that I wanted to use. I probably googled 15 recipes but didn't want to make any of them because they were all to simple, too complicated, or required too many ingredients that weren't the kinds of food that I want to use.

I ended up bastardising all of them.

That sounds grand. Freddy Kruger, of the much loved Nightmare on Elm Street franchise,  is the bastard child of one nun and a thousand maniacs. My dinner, in contrast, was the bastard child of one me, and about fifteen online pasta sauce recipes. It's a lot nicer than the Freddie Kruger. Instead of creating an undead child-killer who stalks the dreams of children to get revenge on their parents for burning him alive, I created nutritious family meal.

While my husband went to one supermarket to get the ground chicken, I went to the one that does the good vegetables, and bought this mountain of colorful produce.

That's tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, spinach, celery, spaghetti squash, basil in a tube, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, oregano and 'Italian seasoning'. I cooked in a bit of a blur. I started off with garlic and onion in a bit of olive oil in a large pan, then added chicken and more garlic, and then celery and mushrooms, the tomatoes definitely came last and the herbs and spices were being added throughout. I baked the spaghetti squash and served the dinner with a side of spinach and a glass of fancy wine.

How fucking sophisticated. We even lit a candle.

It was delicious. I could have sauteed the celery and onions for longer before adding anything else to have them be softer, and I could have peeled the tomatoes to make the sauce smoother, but I quite enjoyed the interesting texture and the occasional crunch in the overall result. My family ate it all up and had seconds and thirds. I love them so very much, and seeing them enjoying a plate of vegetables makes me so very proud.

Wine is also good. Wine makes one feel extra sentimental towards ones family, but they are genuinely wonderful. I am incredibly lucky.

This 'Nutrition Facts' thing refers to all the food I included in the whole meal. Divide the numbers by at least three to see what one serving contains.