December 19, 2004

S-A-TUR-DAY (beat) NIGHT!!

After yesterday's fascinating post about finding new ways to be lazy, I decided to take a little walk around the neighborhood to see what I could see. With camera in tow, I headed to the Rite Aid to see if I could find some Xmas cards. Normally, it's not that hard to find our local Rite Aid but this year it was hard to see because this happy fellow was positioned in front of the store by the Xmas tree vendors. He's big and frightening and looks like he wants to squeeze you into submitting to buy one of his trees.

While there, I decided I wanted to buy a fancy, scented candle. The ones at Rite Aid were far too expensive. Fortunately, in my neighborhood, there are multiple 99 cent stores. When I got out of Rite Aid, I looked across the street to the Bargain Stop. The store being all tarted up for the holidays and looking warm and inviting, I was anticipating a fight with large crowds once inside. I sallied forth. It was worth it. Not only was the story blisfully uncrowded but I found a beautiful, scented candle for 99 cents. I walked a little bit more to see what else I might photograph and I came upon the butcher shop. I've been looking into the window of this butcher shop for over 10 years now and every time I've looked in the past, I've thought I'm going to take a picture of this one day. So, I took two. Here they are. One sign encourages you to order your holiday meat early, the other advertises goat meat. Yummy.

On the way home, I found this "treasure" for sale at the local thrift shop. It is a doll's cradle with one of the Unicorn tapestries painted on the side. I shit you not. I would have bought it except I'm not crazy. When I got home, I finished preparing dinner. I bet you are wondering whether or not I am going to tell you about the meal I prepared last night. Well, put your wondering aside. I made pasta with meat sauce. The tomato sauce came from a can of Sclaffani pureed tomatoes. Okay, here's what I did.

I diced one medium yellow onion and sliced a container's worth of stuffing mushrooms. I sauteed the onion until it started to get trascluscent, then added the mushrooms. Once the mushrooms started to shrink, I added 1/2 a cup of old wine that's been sitting on our counter since our last party (corked of course). Once the mushrooms absorbed some the yummy wine, I added the chopped meat which I had sauteed and drained of fat while cooking the onions. Once the meat was a browned, I added the 16 oz. can of tomato puree. I let that simmer for a while on low heat, about 2 hours (I love slow cooking) and then I made some shells and the rest is dinner history.

It turned out pretty delicious.

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