Still Trying

 

I wrote the following couple of paragraphs a few days ago and I’ve been staring at them for quite some time trying to decide if I should send this to the Blog site.  As I stared at my creation I came to the realization that I might be coming to the end of my writing career.  These past seven months of diminished “out of the house exposure” must be destroying my brain cells. I can’t seem to settle on a subject to maintain your interest in reading this stuff.  Every time I put my hands on the keyboard my brain slides into Cov-19 mode and how it has changed our lives.  I don’t continue because we’ve all been inundated 24/7 will nothing but and as important as it is I’m pretty tired of it.

We all need some to escape from this crazy world we are now living in. Watching television is not providing any decent escapes.  Riots, politics, TV reruns (even reruns are being rerun), television is so bad my only escape has been cooking and travel shows. I’ve even been watching the televised daily Mass.  Here’s hoping a prayer or two might help to turn things around.  Just to let you know though, I’m not giving up.  I’m sure I’ll eventually come up with something decent. Thank heavens some of you are at least enjoying the recipes I’ve been sending.

Here’s what I hesitated sending.

Last week I decided to do a freezer inventory, the upstairs fridge and our spare fridge in the cellar. My investigation upstairs disclosed a couple of small bags of what I assume, were leftovers from past purchases which were too large for some planned recipe.  One bag contained 9 fair sized shrimp and the other bag 6.75 ounces of ground beef. The quantities were just about the right size for a Marge and Bill dinner, but the daily question again reared its ugly head…..what should we have for dinner?

 

This time, I surprisingly I had an answer. By coupling the ground beef with some fresh garden tomatoes given to me by my very kind neighbor I had my answer….a nice fresh Bolognese sauce that I would serve with Angel Hair pasta.  Extra virgin olive oil, onions, garlic, ground beef, chopped fresh tomatoes, Oregano, Basil, Parsley, a little tomato paste, red wine, salt, pepper, a little sugar to sweeten and a few pats of butter to finalize, cooked pasta and small bag number one situation was solved.

 

Day two left me with the need to use up the nine shrimp bag. I still had some fresh tomatoes left so I decided to saute onions with garlic and add the rest of the tomatoes along with an additional 15 oz. can of diced tomatoes. Simmered them with the juice for 5 or so minutes to thicken a bit. Then I stirred in some parsley, dill, salt and pepper, the nine peeled shrimp, a goodly amount of crumbled Feta cheese, and baked it in a 425 oven for about 12 minutes.  I served it over some cooked rice, but pasta would have also served well.  My small leftover bag number two was now gone.  Freezer inventory was all straightened out.