On Sunday morning I got up early, dressed for church, and then, while the family still slept, I drove over to my brother’s house. My brother had asked me if I’d be willing to take some pictures for their band‘s new CD.

I took a few—three hundred and eighty-nine, to be exact.

It’s a good thing I took so many. A lot of the pictures turned out blurry—a combination of the cloudy morning and the wrong lens. Then there were the usual half-shut eyes and telephone poles shooting out of heads and awkward poses.  

How about you sit on the junk pile! Or, Why don’t I stand on the deck and take some pictures of you craning-straining to look up at me?

But some of them turned out nice in spite of myself. Thankfully. 

And then the baby got out of the house and joined the shoot, grassy toes and all.

Not all of the pictures were of the band.

I was putting my camera in the van when my sister-in-law asked if I’d take some pictures of their family. But of course!

Lately, their older daughter has been suffering from a moderate to
severe case of camera shy-itis, so while I snapped pictures, I yammered
about rainbows and their new kitchen and how old she was and such.

The distraction helped. But then Little Sis yawned real big, so I called it quits and wrapped things up.

The end.

This same time, years previous: two-minute peanut butter chocolate cake, red raspberry ice cream, oven-roasted Roma tomatoes, earthy ponderations, part one

This same time, years previous: basic fruit crisp, this is what crazy looks like, how to get your refrigerator clean in two hours, two morals

I never got a picture of the finished sauce. Both times I served it, we were too eager to dig in.

I did get a photo of the garlic simmering in olive oil, though:

Garlic + Olive Oil = Lush

For the whole story, go here. (Warning: there is a blaring grammatical error. See if you can find it. (Hint: my son’s friend’s eyes have special talents.) (If you find other errors, don’t bother telling me.) (Well, you CAN tell me, but I might cry. Grammatical errors—of which I commit many I KNOW—make me curl up into the fetal position, and it’s kind of hard to write on a laptop while in the fetal position.) 

Garlicky Spaghetti Sauce
Inspired by a recipe found in the August 2012 issue of Food and Wine magazine.

Despite the emphasis on garlic, the sauce is not overly pungent. The long cooking softens the bite considerably.

3 quarts canned tomatoes
½ – 3/4 cup (1-3 heads) peeled garlic cloves
2/3 cup olive oil
salt
black pepper
1 pound thin spaghetti
lots of freshly torn basil
freshly grated Parmesan cheese

For the sauce:
Bring the tomatoes to a simmer in a large pot.

Measure the oil into a smaller pot and add the garlic. Bring to a gentle boil and cook unlidded for about thirty minutes, stirring occasionally, until the garlic is golden brown and very tender.

Add the garlic and oil to the tomatoes. Using an immersion or regular blender, blend until smooth. Simmer for about an hour until the sauce has thickened a bit. Add plenty of salt and black pepper.

Set aside half of the sauce to freeze for a later batch of spaghetti or to use as pizza sauce.

For the spaghetti:
Cook one pound of spaghetti to al dente. Drain and return to the pot. Add two cups of the remaining hot sauce and cook for another minute. Serve the spaghetti, ladling more sauce over each portion. Garnish with basil and Parmesan cheese.

This same time, years previous: barley and beans with sausage and red wine