Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Wednesday, 23 January 2002

# 10:30 PM

how to make pasta sauce

a.k.a. "Hey, I don't need a jar of the stuff, I have all the ingredients right here."

  • 2 tomatoes
  • 1 onion
  • 9 mushrooms
  • a handful of black olives
  • 2 large cloves garlic
  • spices: black pepper, oregano, basil, tarragon

All these numbers are fungible: feel free to tweak them as you see fit. The 2:1 tomato:onion ratio is pretty important, though. It's okay to leave out the mushrooms or olives if you don't like them, or substitute other veggies. (Well, I don't think carrots would work.)

Chop up all the vegetables into appropriately sized bits. I like my onions and olives fine; my garlic, tomatoes, and mushrooms chunky. Put them in separate piles.

Start boiling water for the pasta.

In a largish pan, heat 1 tbsp olive oil and a pinch of salt. When it's hot, throw in the onion and stir-fry until it has begun to turn transparent. It's a good idea to reduce the temperature somewhat at this point. Now add the mushrooms. Continue to stir until the mushrooms are brown and have shrunk a bit. Add the garlic and olives. Continue until the garlic turns just barely yellow.

Now dump in the tomatoes, raise the heat again, stir until the tomatoes begin to disintegrate and there's enough liquid in the pan that you are no longer frying the veggies. Add the spices, mix everything up, cut the heat to a simmer and put a lid on the pan.

If you've timed it right, the pasta water will be boiling now. Throw the pasta in the water and leave both sauce and pasta to cook for about ten minutes. Grate some cheese while you're waiting. Drain the pasta, put it in a bowl, and pour the sauce over it. Add the cheese, mix well, eat.

a correction

The pile I picked my goddamned internet sticker from was not a junk pile, Sumana informs me. It was just a pile of stuff.

# 5:45 PM

Earlier today I was walking down a street, sun on my right side, big plate glass window on my left. Looking down, I saw I had two shadows: one going to my left, as you'd expect, but another going to my right. This made no sense for a moment, then I happened to see my reflection in the window had two shadows too. And it dawned on me: the shadow to my right was the shadow of my reflection, projected back out into the space I was in. It was a sensawunda moment.

I read a neat review of an exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art about the history of aluminum. I have nothing to add to what they say about aluminum, but I would like to point out the place about two-thirds down the page where the author tried to write "Otto Wagner (1841-1918)" and the message board program turned "8)" into a gif of a smiley face wearing sunglasses.

Oh neat, when you copy and paste a chunk of text out of Mozilla with an image embedded in it, Mozilla inserts the image's alt text in its place.