The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

I cemented a reputation last night as the girl who can throw dinner together from duct tape and a jar of garlic.

I had volunteered to help Steph pack last night as she’s moving out of her boyfriend’s house. Her friend Emma had come up from Richmond for the weekend to be both moving and moral support. By the time we had arrived at Steph’s new place with a couple of carloads of stuff, we were pretty hungry.

“There’s some stuff in the pantry, see what you can make from that,” Steph said, referring to the stray pantry staples left by the friend she’s subletting from.

The cupboard was pretty bare, but Emma found a box of whole-wheat spaghetti and a can of diced tomatoes. It was a start. Now we needed seasonings. Apparently most of the spices had been moved out, but there was salt, pepper, and a jar of garlic.

I set water to boil for the pasta and started sautéing some garlic in butter while I poked around some more. Steph had some hamburger patties from our Omaha Steaks adventure, so I crumbled those and then remembered that Emma had pulled out the last of a bottle of white wine that was in the fridge. Hm, don’t know how long that’s been in there, but it’s probably still okay to cook with.

So dinner was under way. I browned the meat, added tomatoes and wine, some salt and pepper, but the sauce still needed something. I was about to resign myself to a flat-tasting, unseasoned sauce, when I remembered the envelope of onion soup mix on the counter behind me. I did think the sauce would benefit from some oniony-ness, and hey, soup mix has seasonings in it…

So I stirred a couple of tablespoons of soup mix into the sauce, not the whole envelope, because that would be just too salty. As it was, I thought the sauce was on the salty side, but by then Steph and Emma had come back from retrieving things from the cars and thought it smelled great.

The hot pasta soaked up most of the extra saltiness, and we had found some “Parmesan-style grated topping” in the fridge, so on the whole, it was actually pretty tasty.

This morning, when I went back to help with The Big Move, they were still talking about it. Righteous.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2006 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Food and Diet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.