17 | November | 2010 | A Voice From the Foothills

I love to cook, well most of the time I do. I like to slice and dice. I like working with garlic and onions and tomatoes. So I guess it’s obvious I like EYE-Talian stuff.

So, I figured I’d make a Bolognese sauce, instead of the standard spittingetti sauce I usually make. I figured the main difference would be meat. I decided to use venison since we gotz a lot of it, and it is great in dishes like this.

So, I looked up a recipe in the bible, AKA Joy of Cooking. I had all the ingredients, celery, onion, carrot, white wine, beef stock, milk, tomato paste. Good to go. Didn’t have pancetta, which is just fancy bacon, but I had bacon.

Well, it’s simmering on the stove as we speak. It’s a thing you simmer a looooong time, because it tastes better when you do. And I just couldn’t get over the fact that there was no garlic in it, nor any tomatoes. And I dragged out two Italian cookbooks, one of which is the one from the famous Rao’s in NYCity. No Bolognese sauce in either. None in Martha Stewart’s either. Hmmmm.

So I jumped on the old intertubes and ran it. And landed on a message board where there was a contentious debate about when to add the wine, and when to add the milk. Some added garlic, some abhorred such a sacrilegious addition. Some added tomatoes, of every type, pureed, diced, crushed, and whole. Some added fresh herbs, Batali uses cream. An authentic La Scala recipe was a fraud, and more a plea for “what was in it that made it pink and was the carrot grated or minced?”

“Authentic” recipes abounded and they were all different. I began to wonder if this was like pesto. I had a friend who is very very Italian. Her mother raised paste tomatoes and put up sauce every year. She had never heard of pesto. Go figure. Was this Bolognese sauce somehow a family recipe? I mean, I figured it originated in and around Bologna, Italy. I figured it was more peasanty food.

I had learned from a Latino restaurateur, that there is a local drink in Mexico that is essentially a home-brew and every family pretty much makes it a bit different. Was Bolognese sauce like this?

Anyway, it all got too much for me. I can’t get that intense about cooking! I just want something to taste good and be a standard recipe I can “go to” knowing it will turn out without a lot of trouble. If you have an authentic Bolognese sauce, by all means let me hear it.

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Speaking of the latest election, exit polling tells you why people voted the way they did. This is much more reliable than listening to politicos, most of whom say that people voted the way they did in support of whatever they want to pursue legislatively speaking. Here’s some results I uncovered about the crazy election of 2010:

Democrats by a healthy majority don’t like the Afghan war but Republicans do. No surprise.
Most people voted their party affiliation, and both sides dislike their own party more than they like it. No surprise there either.
Everybody agreed that “it’s the economy stupid,” but there is no clear consensus on how to fix it. That seems true of the so-called experts as well. That leaves us in a pickle I think.
Gays voted Republican in higher numbers than in 2006 or 2008. Go figure that one out. The war is now out in the open between social and fiscal conservative GOPers. This is likely to get ugly.
Latinos voted strongly Democratic except in Florida where Cuban Latinos are a whole different animal.
People who got money (over 100 thou) vote Republican. No surprise.
Democrats pick up most of the post-graduate educated and the less-than-a-high-school diploma group.
Catholics swung back to the GOP but narrowly so.
Working class stiffs went GOP, making it clear they don’t read much of anything.

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I just about lost my cookies on this one. I mean, I started to laugh, and then I started to chortle, (which is different but hard to describe) and the Contrarian is asking, “What? What?”

It seems that a Wisconsin man (OKJimm was it you?) shot his TV to death after watching Bristol Pistol Palin dance on DWTS. I kid you not. A SWAT standoff followed for hours. I also discovered that indeed the voting is fixed. It seems that DWTS can’t control e-mail votes and some Palin-idolators are bragging that they voted for three straight hours building up lilBris’s vote tally. Goodbye DWTS.

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It’s worth your time to stop by Lisa Golden’s blog That’s Why to get information about lobbying your Senators on the issue of extending the unemployment benefits bill. People are in need through no fault of their own. The usual GOP excuses will be coming forth, so do your bit, please.

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We watch Hawaii 5-0. I didn’t expect to like it, but I kinda do. I love the scenery, because I would love to live there. The Contrarian likes it because it’s “episodal.” He thinks most of the world’s problems stem from shows becoming serial. He’s nuts, but you know that. Best line from the “Danno” character ( do not know his name) on David Letterman:

In response to the question “how you do you like living in Hawaii?”

“I loved it the first three weeks, but then I started to miss angry people.”

Yep, I can feel the love. *whimper*

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Well, enough of all this. I’ll let ya know about the Bolognese Sauce. Let me know if you have ideas about the recipe ingredients. I love ya.