1. When the Deke and I are here at our apartment home and eat pasta for dinner, we just open a can of tomatoes, spice 'em up, heat 'em up, and put 'em over the pasta. But, today, with Adrienne, Jack, Molly, Hiram, Olivia, and David visiting us and having dinner, I decided to go all out and make a more ambitious sauce. I imagined what I'd like that sauce to taste like, went to Pinterest, and I found just the recipe and I tripled (!) it. I started with almost browning a head's worth of garlic, pouring two pounds of ground beef and one pound of sweet ground sausage on top of it, and browning the meat all the way through. I salted and peppered it. On top of the meat I poured three cans of crushed tomatoes and three cans of tomato paste. (Ah! This sauce was getting sweeter and sweeter.) Then I added 12 oz. of red wine and two tablespoons of sugar, poured in a generous helping of dried oregano, andton of fresh basil. It was easy to put together and I cooked all afternoon. It turned out just the way I hoped it would and tasted great -- and, to make the cooking of the sauce even more fun, the grown ups all liked it, too.
2. I'm a coast to coast beer drinker. I enjoy the east coast beers I've been introduced to out here from Georgia, New York, Virginia, DC, and Maryland and I like the beers from the middle of the USA, from Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio; and, I love those Colorado beers. Today, Hiram made the pleasure of drinking a Portland, OR beer possible. He brought over some Upheaval IPA, brewed by the Widmer Brothers. As the bottle says, it's unfiltered, unexpected, unapologetic, and uncompromised. For me, it was unreal, for the second weekend in a row, to drink some Oregon beer and this one hit the spot. It's fun to enjoy beers from across our great nation. Cheers!
3. Yeah, the Deke and I could have gotten by fine with a one bedroom apartment home, but the Deke can see into the future and in her Nana crystal ball she saw a second bedroom not only as a guest room, but as a play room for David, Jack, and Olivia. She was so right on the mark. Today, our grandchildren got out the different toys their Nana has supplied the room with and played and played and played. Yes, they came sprinting from their back play room out to report an injustice perpetrated among them or to tell us something they were doing or just to extend their play space from the back to the front of our little abode, but it has turned out to be a perfect decision that we decided to rent two bedrooms, not just one, when we made our head spinning move to Greenbelt, MD.
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