Pantry spaghetti sauce

Just now the house smells deliciously of tomato sauce. Here’s how to make the magic from your very own pantry and garden … this recipe serves 4 moderately hungry people, or two ravenous ones. These are ingredients I consider pantry essentials and always keep on hand.

1 pat butter
1 small to medium yellow onion–or white or purple, diced medium
1 small can tomato sauce, preferably organic
1/2 small can tomato paste, preferably organic
basil from the garden (or dried Italian herbs), 12 large leaves each standard and Thai
1 small hot pepper (I used a ripe black olive pepper from my garden–thimble-sized and very hot), or cayenne pepper
white and black peppercorns
pasta, preferably Italian (I use 2-2.5 oz per person)
good Parmesan cheese

In a stainless steel saucepan, melt a pat of butter over gentle heat.

Add a small to medium onion, diced medium.

Add a small hot pepper if you have one, diced fine. Otherwise, add a sprinkle or two of cayenne pepper.

Wash a dozen leaves each standard and Thai basil (more if the leaves are small). Slice into the pan using herb scissors. (If you have no fresh basil on hand, add dried Italian herbs to taste after adding the tomato sauce, paste, and water.)

Saute gently until the onion begins to brown.

Add the tomato sauce and half the can of tomato paste, plus enough water to thin the sauce to your liking. (Add more paste to thicken the sauce.)

Add half a dozen grinds each white and black pepper. Taste, and correct the seasoning if needed.

Simmer the sauce while you put well-salted water on to boil. At the boil, toss in a small handful of good spaghetti (such as Lidia’s) for each person, and reduce the heat to medium high. Cook al dente and drain.

Plate the pasta and sauce in pasta bowls or on large rimmed plates, top with freshly-grated Parmesan cheese, and serve immediately to people you love (including you).

Bon appetit!

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The owl whinnied

The first time I heard whinnying coming from a tree outside my window, it got my full and immediate attention. I got my shoes on and went outside to check it out, then came back inside to Google this call I’d never before heard in my life.

Turns out it was an Eastern screech owl, making one of its territorial defense calls–the descending trill during territorial defense, to be exact.

I feel particularly fascinated by this owl, and usually go outside to listen when I hear it. Sometimes the dogs are the first to alert me that an owl is nearby. If it’s close enough, they’ll bark when they hear it calling. (They growl and bark at recordings of the owl trill as well.)  I enjoy all birdsong, but this owl’s calls I find hauntingly beautiful.

When I was looking at houses before I bought mine, a homeowner in another historic neighborhood told me they had a neighborhood owl (more probably at least a mated pair I suppose), and I guess now that this is how she knew. I’ve never seen our owl or owls, only heard them. Eastern screech owls are quite small, and apparently are well camouflaged and difficult to spot. Certainly I haven’t seen one yet.

I don’t know why, but I typically hear owl calls between 10 and 11 pm or so. Perhaps this is when the nocturnal hunt begins in earnest, and thus the hour when owl territorial issues arise! With a river nearby here in the middle of the city, owl hunting is most definitely encouraged. I’m more than happy for them (really anyone using non-poisonous methods) to cull the local rodent population.

I wonder if by any chance owls eat my nemesis, the grasshopper? A girl can dream. (Research indicates they do eat insects as part of their varied diet, though grasshoppers were not specifically named.)

Perhaps I should install an appealing nest box, as close as possible to my roses …

In which the grasshopper has a death wish

Today I walked blithely out my front door, and was arrested by the sight of the grasshopper–back on my rose. It has sheared off, with its little grasshopper mandibles, an entire side of the rose. It has given the rose Grace Jones’s haircut.

Whether it was a good look for Grace I cannot say, but it is most certainly not a good look for a rose.

This time I knocked the grasshopper into the succulent groundcover. I peered down at his yellow ugliness … “You clearly have a death wish.”

I thought fleetingly of how useful my trowel could be at that moment, neatly dividing the grasshopper in two–if I were swift, and lucky, and especially if I had the trowel outside with me at all, which I did not.

The grasshopper will live another day.

The grasshopper and the rose

The roses are blooming their lush fall bloom. My favorite is David Austin’s English rose The Prince. Velvety deep red, yellow-centered, many-petalled. The scent–rich, spicy, deeply satisfying.

Yesterday I found an ugly yellow grasshopper snacking on one of The Prince’s largest blooms. I was not best pleased.

There was a time when I had a bloodlust for grasshoppers, but now I live and let live. They are not, however, welcome to eat my roses. So I looked around for a weapon, then carefully knocked the grasshopper into the boxwood hedge with the watering pitcher I found nearby.

Carefully because experience has taught that grasshoppers often like to leap upon their attacker, and I am not one who relishes being leapt upon by the larger insects.

I inhaled deeply the intoxicating scent of one of the unassaulted roses, and satisfied with a job well done, went back into the house.

After the rain

The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. –William Morris

Finally, after the drought, the rains came–and today it is cool. I have the window in my bedroom open for the first time in many months, since the springtime. It feels like a miracle, the cool air as I walk outside–and of course it is. I appreciate my air conditioner, but how lovely it is to experience air cooled by Mother Nature.

The plants are content. They know the difference between the water I give them, and the rain. They can survive on city water, but lately some of them have been looking peaked. There’s nothing like the real thing, the gift from the heavens. They turn their faces upward, stretch toward the sun, and smile their leafy little smiles. I smile back.