Cooking with Michal

I was cooking last night with my computer on the table playing some music and suddenly I thought "What if I documented my cooking and shared it on my blog?" Lately my posts have all been stories and deep musings so how about something light-hearted (and delicious!). Maybe I'll do another book review again soon as well (I just picked up my copy of Hunger Games since I had originally forgotten it at Brooke's).

So, today I will be cooking spaghetti bolognese sauce. It is very simple to make and you can feel free to add or take away anything that doesn't fit with your tastes. You can use it as spaghetti sauce, eat it with some French or Italian bread, with chicken possibly? Who knows, the possibilities are endless!

Start by chopping up some carrots, celery and onions. Be careful, the onions may make you cry. I got to use free onions from Ontario, Oregon, that I got at Taste of the Harvest. The carrots are picked fresh from the church garden that Elsa goes to (and I got to help out with a few weeks ago). Incredibly fresh and incredibly delicious!



Put all the veggies into a large pan with a little bit of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, or regular Olive Oil or skanky Olive Oil, whatever you prefer. Keep the burner on medium and stir the veggies to keep them nice and soft.
Take out some ground beef or turkey or any type of minced meat and add it to the pan of veggies. Keep on stirring and flipping the meat over so that all sides get cooked up nice and brown. This is the point where you might want to add some spices or salt or pepper or whatever tickles your fancy.
While all that is cooking, assemble your tomato based products: canned tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato paste. What is the difference between all of these? Who knows and honestly who cares. This is what the recipe calls for so use them. Find a nice big pot and when the meat is cooked, transfer the meat and veggies into the big pot.

Be careful to not spill all over the place. The pan may be hot...

Next, dump in all the tomato based products. The paste will be pasty... the sauce will be saucy and the tomatoes will most likely splatter if you are not careful.

Once everything is in the pot, just stir it until it gets bubbly. Then feel free to serve immediately or just jar it up and keep it. You can freeze it, keep it in the fridge or give it to a friend. And that has been cooking with Michal. Enjoy!