He's making a big batch of red sauce, ably assisted by me. Here's
a loose recipe:

Brown some hot Italian sausages.
In the sausage grease, cook diced onion and then garlic. (If you
need the space, remove the sausages and put them back in the pot
after the onions are done.) If there isn't enough grease, add some
olive oil.
Add six 28-ounce cans of tomato sauce, 18 ounces of tomato paste,
some wine, and some water. If you wish, you can brown the tomato
paste before adding the sauce.
Add minced parsley, oregano, basil (I've stopped arguing about
putting the basil in so soon), salt, pepper, and red chili flakes.
Simmer for several hours until thickened.
At this point, the sausages have given their all to the sauce, and
their texture is terrible. Discard them.

Lately, we've been using Black Box Cabernet Sauvignon. Previously,
we used white zinfandel.

In aid of this effort, I brought up from the basement the remains
of last year's garlic crop, went through it, and discarded anything
that was soft. We ended up using three small (about 1-1.25 inch
diameter) heads of garlic in the sauce.

--
Cindy Hamilton

Cindy Hamilton wrote:
....
> In aid of this effort, I brought up from the basement the remains
> of last year's garlic crop, went through it, and discarded anything
> that was soft. We ended up using three small (about 1-1.25 inch
> diameter) heads of garlic in the sauce.

fresh garlic is worth having (and growing if you have
space for it).

i have a lot of last year's crop still sitting here
waiting for me to go through it, but realistically i
should take it out and bury it all deeply in a garden
and save myself a lot of useless work. almost all of
it is not worth using (last year was not a good garlic
year). :( first time in 20 years so i'm hoping it
was just a bad break and all will be ok this year.

songbird