March 26
A Home-Cooked Meal!

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- Easy Mushroom Marinara Sauce [View Recipe]
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Ingredients
- .5 tablespoon oil
- 10 medium mushrooms (wiped clean)
- salt & pepper
- 3 cloves garlic
- red pepper flakes
- 1 28 ounce can tomatoes
- .5 teaspoon basil
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 3-inch stems parsley (cleaned)
- 1 tablespoon parsley (cleaned)
Instructions
We start by heating the oil over medium-low heat in a large pan.
We put one mushroom at a time into our egg slicer and slice. When all the mushrooms are sliced, we raise the heat on the pan to medium and add the mushrooms. We cook, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes. We want the mushrooms tender and their juices released. We season the mushrooms with salt and pepper and reduce the heat to medium-low.
Using our garlic press, we place a clove of unpeeled garlic into the press and add right to the pan (using a fork to get the garlic off the press as necessary). We discard the peel, and continue with the remaining garlic. We stir in the pressed garlic and add a small pinch of red pepper flakes.
We open the can of tomatoes and pour the liquid right into the pan. With a kitchen scissor, we chop the tomatoes coarsely, right in the can, then, add them to the sauce. We add more seasoning, the bay leaf, dried basil, and parsley stems, then simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes (while the pasta cooks).
When it is almost time to serve, we add a little of the pasta cooking liquid to the sauce and, using our scissors, we snip the parsley leaves into the sauce. We taste for seasoning and serve over cooked pasta.
- Penne
- Fresh Italian Bread
The baby did not go to sleep until well after midnight last night. To make the day a little easier, everyone went downtown to visit Chris at work. In addition to having snacks at the local coffee house, the kids got to visit the office and play tuxracer on daddy's work computer (one of the many benefits of a Linux desktop). All the while the baby was shown off to Chris's co-workers. It was very nice - until the drive home. The baby screamed lots.
On his way home, Chris stopped at Piedigrotta for bread and ended up coming home with several pastries. Robin pretended to disapprove, but we all knew that she was secretly happy.