Food & Wine... Experienced!: Monopoly and Spaghetti

How many hours of Monopoly did you play as a kid?
I played it so much I knew all the rents by heart.
My goal: buy everything, mortgage as necessary, win.
I can be very competitive. {But I was the shoe in the game pictured!}
There's something so fun about playing games, and I'm all about fun right now. This week I came across a poem found by @GKPhotography that I find very inspiring
and have to share it with everyone.

dream big
want more from life
do something fun
apply your creativity
take risks
live your life
play Monopoly
jump
play
create
follow your dreams

How many people, when thinking of spaghetti, think of that charming scene in the movie “Lady and the Tramp” where Lady and Tramp are both slurping up the same long spaghetti noodle, ending when their lips meet in a slurpy kiss?

Who says spaghetti can’t be fun?

For most families, spaghetti is a kid pleaser and nothing could be simpler to make for dinner. Once you have spaghetti sauce in the freezer, it’s simply a matter of boiling the spaghetti and heating the sauce. And voilà! Dinner is served!

History
The pasta we call spaghetti originally came from China where it was made from either rice flour or hard wheat flour with water and salt added.

Tomatoes, on the other hand, are known to have their origins in the Americas so the first tomato sauce would have been made by the Aztecs. However, when we talk about spaghetti sauce today we are thinking about it as an Italian recipe. In fact, the earliest recipe for spaghetti sauce has been found in a cookbook printed in 1692 by Antonio Latini. Hmmm – that’s 318 years ago! Any food that survives that long has got to have something going for it!

My go-to Spaghetti Sauce recipe has evolved through the years and I release it to you as a favourite from my family to yours.

Recipe

1 can of tomato paste
2 fresh tomatoes
1 large can of diced tomatoes
1 jar of pasta sauce (my favorite is Original Ragu)
2 tablespoons oregano
¼ cup chopped, fresh basil
½ cup onions
2 cloves garlic, minced
Salt to taste
Fresh black pepper to taste
5 small cans kidney beans (optional)
½ cup Parmesan cheese, grated

Brown onions and garlic. Add all other ingredients except the kidney beans and Parmesan cheese. Bring to a boil. Transfer to a crock pot or slow cooker. Simmer for two hours. Add the kidney beans (if desired) and simmer for one more hour.

Do not skimp on the simmering time.

After the cooking is complete, cook spaghetti as per the directions on the package and top with this succulent sauce. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese. It’s also fun to serve cottage cheese with this meal, which gives the spaghetti a lazy Lasagna feel.

This sauce freezes well and is handy to pull out for a quick and easy dinner. It’s also a favourite for camping. In small containers, the frozen sauce acts as ice blocks in the cooler – ready to be pulled out and added to a pot of spaghetti cooked over a campfire.

And speaking of campfires, how about a song to go with the dinner? This song, sung to the tune of “On Top of Old Smokey” was popularized in 1963 by Tom Glazer and the Do Re Me Children’s Choir.

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