Mita's Tuscan Sugo (p. 201)

I was all alone this weekend while Matt was at the beach with his parents and sister, but I still wanted to do some cooking. Pasta has always been a comfort food of mine -- we ate it at least once a week growing up, so I chose Mita's Tuscan Sugo, a tomato sauce with a little bit of ground meat poured over a long, thin pasta.

With olive oil at the bottom of my sauté pan I slowly cooked chopped parsley, celery, and onion until they were soft. I accidentally left out the garlic. Whoops. If you make this -- add garlic.

I added a small amount of ground pork to the pan and kept if over the heat until the meat was thoroughly cooked. A little white wine was poured in and boiled down, just for flavor, and then I added chopped tomatoes (juices included) and cooked until the majority of the liquid had been absorbed and the tomatoes had lost most of their form.

I mixed in some slivered  basil (which is growing like gangbusters in my herb pot) and salt and pepper and then spooned the sauce over linguini.

I also forgot to put parmesan on top of the pasta, but I was okay with that. The dish didn't blow me away, but it's a very solid pasta dish and relatively easy to to make. I liked how it had meat in it, but the meat didn't overpower the rest of the tomato sauce in any way, it just added a nice flavor. I wouldn't necessarily make this again, just because there are so many delicious pasta sauces out there, but I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the leftovers!

parsley -- $1.69 (tons left)

celery -- $1.69 (tons left)

onion -- $ .94 (half left)

ground pork -- $.42

tomatoes -- $1.57 (CSA price)
linguini -- $1.99

Total Cost of Mita's Tuscan Sugo: $8.28