Spaghetti with Cow Sauce

The international assembly continues in the kitchen. I did another roll call and the following members have checked in: Pears from South Africa, Peaches from Greece, Butter from New Zealand, Ritz Crackers from the Emirates, Wheat Crackers from Saudi Arabia, Orange Juice from Austria, and Spaghetti from Sweden. Three boxes of food from America are sitting on the dock in Houston, wait till that gets here……everyone's going to have to move over to make room. In the meantime, if I don’t lay off Latvian potato chips my Levis from China won't pull over this global sized butt. That will be an international incident, trust me.

The spaghetti with cow sauce wasn’t all that bad. It had a slightly different flavor than my usual concoction, but I put that down to the sauce itself as opposed to the meat. I didn’t have any spices to add, so what I dumped from the jar was what I got. I wasn’t planning to buy spices here since I have some coming (probably by Christmas) in the shipment from Houston. The first few bites I took of it were small tentative ones but by the time I got to the end of the plate, I was beginning to get it.

I’d buy Ramstore’s ground cow again......very very lean cow, t’was. Now, what I thought was a large jar of tomato sauce, was in actuality tomato paste. So, John had to make a stop at Citimart on his way home from work for some spaghetti sauce. I expected he’d walk in with a couple of bottles of Ragu since that stuff seems to be pervasive (Russian catsup tastes exactly like Ragu in a squirt bottle), but he didn’t have Ragu. He came in with two teeny tiny bottles of a runny looking sauce that was going to have to do. The consistency of the sauce made me glad I had a large jar of tomato paste to thicken it up and when it was done, it looked like a damn fine spaghetti sauce.

Since, I only have one working burner (the electric one); I had to take the sauce off the stove to cook the spaghetti. That dang burner isn’t a big frying pan size burner, it’s one of the smaller ones, so we had time to put away two beers a piece before I had to get up and tend to the stove again. It was also enough time for me to rag on John for not making sure I had four working burners (and cable TV) before I got here.

The stove top is an interesting beast, made by Electrolux of all people. It has three gas burners and one electric one which, on the upside, means that if the power goes out you can still cook and if the gas gets shut off you can still cook, though in both instances I think dining out is the preferred method of coping. To keep the sauce warm while waiting for the water to boil, I had John move the microwave from its spot in the microwave cubbyhole…..where they forgot to put an outlet….to the counter. It was the first time we powered that up, and amazingly enough, it worked just fine when it was actually connected to the wall. I think that’s one of the things I miss the most…an abundance of outlets behind the kitchen counter. We have one single receptacle outlet in which the toaster and the kettle trade places. There is another one…but of all places to put an outlet, it’s directly behind the stove top. If the gas ever gets turned on to the stove, I’ll be frying a few cords.

The other day we found the valve to turn on the gas to the stove. It took us a while to figure out it was hidden behind a kitchen drawer. I was all set to crank that sucker up but John held me back. He said he hadn’t turned on the gas because he had no idea who had installed it and what had been done to pressure test the lines…..oh. In that case, maybe we should go out shopping, take the dog, and our passports, and while we’re gone have the master come over to give that little yellow handle a crank. Or even better contact the landlord and tell him the “Mrs.” has arrived and would like an all electric stove, if you please. The Mrs. would really like a gas stove but in the absence of licensed installers, she’s willing to compromise.

I looked up when we were eating and noticed that the fume hood over the stove doesn’t vent to the outside. It essentially looks like a one armed “Lost in Space” robot hanging on the wall. You know, I bet they were waiting until the gas was turned on and a natural hole appeared in the wall all by itself.

Too bad Mc Drav isn’t on the way home from the office.