Following a True Pioneer (Woman

If you haven't heard of Ree Drummond's blog http://thepioneerwoman.com/ and enjoy self-depracating, honest and down-to-earth silly writing, check it out. I started reading it maybe a year and a half ago and still check in fairly often. The author is an LA-born (same here) USC grad (same here) who loved eating a variety of ethnic cuisines (same here) and has moved into a lifestyle that's more country than chic (again, same here). Sure, she's a white lady who moved to the midwest to get married and I moved to Japan to teach English, but there's still some weird correlations between how a person goes about adjusting to a lifestyle that's far less convenient, but somehow more fulfilling than their old one.

Anyway, I thought I'd follow one of her recipes for the hell of it. Since it's tough to get things like fresh cheese or real produce without spending an arm and a leg, I opted for a simple meat sauce recipe (here)...still had to make substitutions though. The list of ingredients is

2 15oz cans of whole tomatoes (I used one cut, one whole)

2 cloves of garlic

1/2 an onion

2 lbs of hamburger (I used about 350 grams of mixed beef and pork, or less than half of what the recipe originally calls for)Thyme
Fresh ground pepper (nope, store bought shaker stuff)SaltFresh grated parmesean cheese (I used Kraft)Rigatoni (I used fuscilli since there's only about 5 kinds of dry pasta available here)

Basically, you can see the kinds of subs I made. Part of the reason is that the ingredients are probably far more expensive here than they are in the US...the meat alone cost me over $5, whereas less than 1 lb of ground beef in the US wouldn't cost that by far. I also paid over $1.50 each for those cans of tomatoes, and a small bottle of thyme was over $2. For the hell of it, I threw in a couple of chopped green peppers because they were sitting in my fridge and I figured I might as well have something green in there. I also threw in some hot sauce for punch.

You can see the steps I took here...cooking for an hour was kind of annoying since I started after 8 and was STARVING, so I cut the total time down to 40 minutes. It turned out well, but I think real cheese, more meat, and a longer cooking time would spruce it up a bit. Also could use some red pepper flakes...it ended up far more bland than I think it should have (may have taken out too much of the fat as well as underseasoned). All in all, though, I thought it went pretty well. I also have a TON of the sauce left over since I'm cooking for one, so I can toy with the sauce bit by bit as I eat the leftovers. Tonight, it's going over pasta AND tofu :)