naptime is for cooking

(nb — I started this post two days ago. That's kind of what my life has been like recently.)


In honour of Marcella Hazan — although, truth be told, I have no idea which book or class this comes from. This is her bolognese sauce, more or less (perhaps even her "famous" one, according to the New York Times obituary), though I doubt she would acknowledge it as such. My knife skills, patience and available time being what they are, I utterly fail at making a proper soffritto — and anyway, I rather like the rustic look that identifiable chunks of carrot and celery give. So: diced onions, yes, as small as I can stand to make them, and fine for the home, but it would probably make a true gastronome weep.

Anyway, this has by our go-to bolognese sauce for years, since my brother-in-law made it for us many winters ago and I cribbed the recipe from him. (I have no idea what the state of his soffritto is — although, knowing him, it is probably meticulous and excellent.) We make it all the time, almost always only in winter, and the first one of the season always feels like the start of something — an acknowledgement of the incoming cold season, maybe. Just the smell of it makes me think of snows outside, the smell of frost, the comfort of the warmth indoors and the quality of winter light.

It's the sort of food that is deeply, almost sacrilegiously out of place in the warm months, and its reappearance made me happy — even though it also meant, inevitably, the reappearance of woollies and cold and being able to see my breath in the morning.

(Pd says that we've been having a mild fall. I say we haven't been experiencing the same season at all.)


I've finally finished version 2 of the Spanish Inquisition's Roo coat. (The above picture was taken yesterday, when I was about 20 rows from the end of the second sleeve.) It's going into a Eucalan bath and getting a wet block tonight. Then I'll knit a button band and put those penguin buttons on it. The toggle closures were actually one of my favourite parts of this coat, but ... I've knit this coat twice now and I want her to wear it. I am not above petty bribery, and the kid loves her penguins.