This is a hearty, chunky bolognese sauce recipe packed with sausage, mushrooms, ground beef, onions, carrots, basil, oregano and a just a little red wine. It’s easy to put together and makes enough to last for days. Good for freezing, good for breakfast, good for making your home smell a little bit more like Naples. If you’re into that. Michael prefers it when my home smells a little bit more like North Carolina, but that only happens when I make pulled pork.
This recipe comes from my friend Samantha J., who’s sweet and pretty and has a necklace made out of little metal gears and cogs which I hope she’ll let me wear the day I’m buried.
I asked Samantha J. if I could take a picture of the two of us to post with the recipe, and I gave her photo approval. That was a mistake. I forgot that when I take a picture with someone else and give them photo approval, they don’t determine the photo’s success or failure based on how I look.
So we had to take three. The third is below. I think she likes this one but just to be safe I made a deal with her: “Let me post this picture and I’ll post FIVE embarrassing pictures of myself to go with it!” Looking back, I don’t think I can actually call it a deal, since I just sorta told her that’s what was gonna happen because I wanted to eat my peanut butter and banana bruschetta.
I think Samantha is a fox all the time, but I know how we humans get. One day I went through all the family albums and burned every childhood picture of me wearing my mother’s 1960′s waist-long curly brown wig that made me look a little like a caveman, a little like Loretta Lynn, and a lot like one of the back-up dancers on Laugh-In.
So you won’t find that picture included below. You will some real jiffies though! After all, I did make a promise to Samantha J., which I better keep if I ever want to get my hands on that necklace. So please peruse me in five moments of teeth-gnashing embarrassment, presented in random order, and have yourself a good laugh at my expense.
And when you’re done, definitely grab yourself a pot and make this sauce recipe, because that Smantha J. can cook!
Gary’s Most Embarrassing Photo #1 – At the time my mother took this picture, I was convinced she wanted to celebrate my foray into the world of dramatic arts and preserve it for the ages. Come thirty years, I was certain we’d all look back on this costume and exclaim, “My God! The pageantry!” Instead, all I can remember about those bed sheets now is if you barfed on them just right, you wouldn’t be able to find it afterwards.
Gary’s Most Embarrassing Photo #2 – I’m not exactly embarrassed by this picture as it the first indication of the striking physique that was ahead for the world to admire and envy. But this picture does remind me of the time I was staying at my friend Lucy’s house and the guy she was regularly having sex with called, wanting to stop by for a little late night ”pajammie whammy.” She got all dolled up, but when he knocked at her door I squealed, jumped up from the couch, tore off all my clothes and ran to the front hallway. I bent my naked legs at the knee and turned them sideways, pressing my hand against my hip like a 1920s flapper girl. ”Let him in!” I sang out enchantingly, “I’m just mad about the boy!” Then to add a little more glitz, I started cleaning my non-existant facial whiskers with my wrist.
I’ll never forget how someone as normally ballsy and composed as Lucy suddenly crumbled into a mass of desperate pleading. ”Gary, no!” she begged, “Don’t… do… this to me!” But I didn’t listen. Instead, I just altered my pose by tucking my genitals between my thighs and delicately extending my arms up and out, like that Silence of the Lambs killer.
Eventually I let Lucy chase my bare ass back to the couch, where I slid under a chemise blanket and made like I was asleep while she and the guy passed me on their way to the bedroom. The lesson to be learned here is that I have no shame and love to get naked when it’s least appropriate… so be forewarned potential employers, dental hygienists, and unsuspecting elevator companions.
Gary’s Most Embarrassing Photo #3
Mom: “Gary, it’s Saturday! Doesn’t going outside and playing with the neighbor kids sound like fun?”
Gary: “No way, mom. I’m gonna put on my crown and your crushed velvet Christmas cape and play the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook all day! Who wants to harmonize on “June is Bustin’ Out All Over!”??
Gary’s Most Embarrassing Photo #4 - What child in the 1970s was able to resist ice cream temptingly packaged in a rust orange and brown carton? Is it even ice cream? I’ve seen cartons like that on sale at Alamo Hay and Grain. But clearly, whatever was in that box, sugary treat or hormonally-enhanced alfalfa block, there was no question it was heading into my mouth on the long and winding route to my stylish rubber pants!
And is that an aerosol can my parents have stored next to where we kept the food? Is that the reason I pee out my belly button?
Gary’s Most Embarrassing Photo #5 - I have no recall of this photo, but I have to, HAVE TO assume someone off-camera is telling me to pose like I’m the adopted daughter of Joan Crawford.
One time an ex-boyfriend said to me, “I wonder if your mother has any concerns or worries that she did something to make you gay,” to which I replied, “Well she’d better, because it’s probably all her fault!” And here’s the long-awaited photographic evidence.
No, friends, I am not actually a contestant in the 1975 Miss HoneyBee Pageant. I’m just a poor boy in striped pants, aiming to please. To this day, I’m basically still just a poor boy in striped pants, aiming to please.
I hope all this makes Samantah J. feel better about her picture. In fact, I hope it makes everyone feel a little better about “that picture” we all know is out there… the one where if there’d been just a second’s more notice, a few more minutes in the sun that morning, or a light bulb with just ten more watts, we could have looked like a star, instead of looking like someone destined to be snickered at once the word invented #ThrowbackThursday.
Click here for Samantha J’s Bolognese Sauce Recipe
Posted 1 week, 6 days ago. Add a comment
You can be certain I’m not going to eat all those oranges I just bought.
A giant sack of fresh oranges is like a goldfish. Initially, you’re excited about buying it; your future together seems full of promise and contentment. But the minute you walk it through your door, all the appeal just drains right away, and you realize from here on out, it’s just gonna be work. You regret putting more thought into the purchase beforehand, and you kick yourself for not spending your dough on those salt and pepper shakers shaped like little wiener dogs instead.
At least a goldfish will attempt to demonstrate some gratitude for the new home you’ve provided it, performing a kicky little “cha cha” with its tail for you at the glass, or relentlessly dotting the top of its little castle with grateful fish kisses. “Oh the floor space! And what curb appeal! You’ve made me the happiest son-of-a-bitch in my whole spawn!”
Yeah, a goldfish knows a good thing when it’s got one going. But an orange is never grateful. It just sits there. It gives you nothing. And unlike a goldfish, you can’t flush an orange when it starts boring you.
Oranges really should try harder. If an open-hearted shopper like myself doesn’t come by and sweep them off the top of that citrus heap, the alternatives are not promising: the day-old salad bar perused by hungry paralegals, subbing as a hacky sack for the box boys at break time, or maybe just straight to the dumpster… then the trash truck…. and on to the landfill, only to mysteriously end up where all unwanted produce ends up: the side of a dirt road in San Onofre next to a decomposing copy of Penthouse and a Glad Bag crammed with the souvenirs of a serial killer’s best weekend ever.
An orange really should learn to play the game smarter, maybe partner up with a more satisfying food item. I know I’d be more tempted to go for an orange if I knew when I peeled back the rind there was a giant globe of mozzarella cheese waiting for me. Or maybe the orange and Lottery industries could come together. I’d be super stoked if I could scrape off the side of an orange with a penny and underneath it said “FREE SPIN!” Even if it didn’t entitle me to actually spin anything, I’d just enjoy being a winner, and the orange would get all the credit.
But those things won’t happen. So those oranges are just gonna sit there, counting down their days in a plastic bowl crammed between my land line telephone and a crowd of unsharpened pencils in a mug that proclaims “Sober Hunks Rule!” while a goldfish looks on, just shaking its head. “Man, you oughtta learn some soft shoe. Don’t you know… in this life, ya’ gotta sing for your supper.”
Recipe for Trisha Yearwood’s Hawaiian Fruit Salad with Honey, Lime and Ginger Dressing
Posted 2 weeks, 1 day ago. Add a comment
I once wrote a story about a nice guy who ended up breaking into the home of his boss and strangling the maid when he unexpectedly found her there, innocently cleaning the inside of a giant vase with a vacuum hose. He snuck up behind her, yanked the hose from her hands and wrapped it around her throat. She twisted and kicked for a while, but he just dragged her around the house, tugging her along backwards from one room to the next to keep her from re-gaining her balance and putting up any real fight.
After she was dead, he kept his grip around her throat for another few minutes because he had seen so many movies where characters who are certain to be dead turn out to not be, and come back in the third act to surprise the killer who then stumbles down some basement stairs in shock and bangs their head against a water heater and dies.
Of course, the killer then never comes back to life in the same unexpected way the original victim did because they’re after all, a killer, and we expect fairness to prevail in our movies, unless the movie is directed by Robert Altman or someone German. But in real life, I know for a fact that you’re less likely to die from hitting your head against a water heater than you are if an intruder drags you around a house backwards by your neck with a vacuum hose. Ask anyone off the street about this; you’ll get the same answer.
When I was a kid and my parents let me stay home by myself, I would pull the largest knife out of the kitchen drawer and stab a cardboard box in my toy closet repeatedly, honing my aim and fortitude in case a burglar broke into the house and tried to kill me. Looking back, perhaps I should have asked myself why I thought a burglar might break into the house between 2 and 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, but ever since the time I was first able to pull myself out of my playpen, I have lived feverishly by the motto that you can never be too prepared.
As an example: I don’t wait until the end of the day to buy tickets for a movie Michael and I are planning to see that night. I buy them first thing in the morning. And if Michael is in charge of buying the tickets and plans on waiting until the end of the day, I try to warn him. “Maybe they’ll be sold out by the time you go to buy them. And then where will we be, hmmm?” But Michael just does what he wants. And almost always, there are good seats left. But sometimes there aren’t, and when that happens I don’t wag my finger and look at him with crooked lips, even though I could. It’s the same thing with being ready with a giant knife on a Sunday afternoon. “Maybe someone will crawl in through the doggie door and kill me when I’m home alone. And I won’t notice in time because I’ll too busy playing UNO against myself at the kitchen table. Then where will I be, hmmm? Dead. Dead with three Skips and a Draw Four card still unplayed, that’s where! And then people could say, “He should have been ready with a giant knife just in case,” and wag their fingers at each other during my funeral. Who wants that? Not me. That’s why I’m always ready: buying movie tickets, avoiding being murdered, and everything in between.
Needless to say, Michael is not fond of this paranoid quality of mine. When he’s supposed to call me at a certain time and doesn’t, I get panicky and start dialing his phone over and over, then hanging up before I leave a message, so he can see I’ve called fifteen times but won’t actually be met with the desperate voicemails I used to leave him, such as, “I need to know that a serial killer hasn’t gotten you. I’m worried. Plus I don’t understand how people are identified by dental records and I won’t do it right. PLEASE CALL ME BACK!”
Michael sighs sadly and presses his eyelids together dramatically whenever I start acting this way. Sure, I may sometimes walk down the street with my head facing the sky in case a piano is about to fall out a window. And when we hear about a trainer being pulled into the water by a whale at a marine park, I may look over at him and state plainly, “And THAT is why I want a harpoon!” I think secretly Michael belives I need help for this. But I don’t care. Sometimes, when we’re leaving the movie theatre he goes down the stairs without holding the handrail, and I say to myself, “We’ll see who gets the last laugh, buddy.”
Click here for an AMAZING Blueberry Sauce Recipe!
Michael has been so health-conscious lately… steamed vegetables, freshly squeezed fruit juices, hummus and polenta. My cake brought that all to a crashing halt last night. I thought he might resent me for whipping it up. Instead, he exclaimed, “I wanna dive in and roll around in that!” Who wouldn’t? Those creamy waves of maple frosting would feel so good against the skin, wouldn’t they?
I am not a good influence. After I helped clog up his arteries and flush away that build-up of nutrients, I also kept him up past his bed time. He goes to be at ten… on a Saturday night! He probably doesn’t want me telling you that, but I let him walk out of here with three pieces of carrot cake in my favorite piece of tupperware, so I figure he won’t kick me.
Continue reading “Smitten Kitchen’s Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting” »
Posted 2 months, 1 week ago. Add a comment
The Voice Recap (NBC) – March 25, 2013
The #Bachelor Sean Lowe Recap – February 4, 2013 (ABC)