My marinara.

Mirepoix marinara sauce (vegetarian)

3 stalks of celery with leaves

4 large carrots, peeled

1 can crushed tomatoes

1 lb roma tomatoes, cored, seeded and chopped

2 large onions

4 garlic cloves, minced

 

                     1/3 cup sweet sherry (!)

                     1 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped coarsely

                      2 tbsp olive oil

                      1 thai chili, seeded and chopped finely

Some recipes add sugar. The carrots and the sweet sherry take care of that here. 

In food processor, chop celery, carrots and onions. Heat oil in heavy saucepot and sautee onions until translucent; add  garlic, chili and sautee 1-2 minutes until aromatic. Add celery and carrots, sautee for another 4-5 minutes to coat with oil. Deglaze with sherry. Bring to slight boil. Add canned tomato and diced fresh tomato, bring to boil and reduce to low. Add salt to taste (about 1-3+ tsp, depending on the salt content of the canned tomatoes). Simmer covered for about half an hour, stirring occasionally until thick. Add basil 2 minutes before serving, stirring until wilted. Before serving, you can stir a small amount of extra olive oil to give it a glossy finish. Makes a thick, hearty sauce that clings nicely to thicker pasta shapes like radiatori and orechiette. Also serves as a good base for a meat sauce; or with the addition of olives, artichoke hearts, anchovies and 2 more chilis, makes a nice puttanesca.

yield– about 7 cups

In theory, 2 points/half cup.

The Mysteries of Pittsbrugh

When hungry, shave. 

We just moved to Pittsburgh, a lovely city, with all its post-industrial squalor and its impenetrable hills. I read on a web search that the steepest street in the country is somewhere here in town (37 degrees!), not in San Francisco, mind you. One curiosity about this city is that its streets and neighborhoods are almost impossible to figure out. Even the GPS has gotten confused, bonging, producing multiple arrows and screaming “when possible do a legal U-turn!” It is a so hard to figure out precisely because of its loveliness: all those hills and valleys produced little independent nests of neighborhoods which eventually crept to each other and interlaced fingers, sometimes with bridges, sometimes with tunnels, sometimes connecting streets that shouldn’t have connected. The basic problem is that each of these neighborhoods had its own distinct logic that doesn’t necessarily correspond to a composite whole. Forget grids. This town is a literal non-sequitur, “doesn’t follow.” And proudly so. 

So non-sequitur seems to be the order of the day around here. I gave a fly-fishing demonstration (yes, a patrician affectation from when I lived in New England) to Junior’s first grade class. I showed them flies I had tied, how a multiplier reel works, how to lift a weight-forward line into the air and cast it into a coffee cup twenty five feet away.

“Any questions or comments?” Hands rise. “Yes?”

“My dog ate a butterfly.” Lovely.

When hungry shave. When pressed for time, plant an heirloom tomato. Be good for a week, show up on time to the Weight Watchers meeting, lose nothing. Be so-so for the next week, lose four pounds. Don’t try to figure it out. The GPS will go crazy.