I have a funny story. My wife is a nurse, and she works nights. The other day, when I was off work, I promised her that, before she left for the night shift, I would make her a spaghetti dinner.
I had ambitious plans including a complex, flavorful sauce, meatballs, and garlic bread. I briefly considered homemade noodles but ultimately decided not to be quite that ambitious.
The funny part is that I fell asleep in the middle of the day and woke up when it was time for my wife to go to work. I quickly roused her out of bed (she was running late) and had to send her off with a makeshift dinner.
Fortunately, she has a sense of humor, so this resulted in no particular problems to speak of. In the end, it was probably a good thing, because I finally made her the promised dinner on her first day off after a four-day run, and it took me considerably longer than I anticipated: I started about six, and with her help, got dinner made, eaten, and cleaned up at almost ten o’clock, when I’m writing this post.
Part of the reason I wanted to do this is because we got a food processor as a wedding gift, and I’ve been having fun with it. I made meatballs in which I hid oats, almonds, chia seeds, flaxseed, and the superfood blend I put in my morning protein shakes. In the sauce itself, I pureed almost the entire refrigerator’s worth of vegetables. I followed a recipe as a sort of suggestion rather than a rule as I ground up vine-ripened tomatoes, bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, and three bulbs [sic] of garlic, and mixed them with white wine, olive oil, and whatever spices I felt like. The result was quite flavorful and really good.
We ended up with a ton of this, which is great, because now we’re set for spaghetti for the next week or so.