Just an “normal” Sunday in an Italian home??

Being Italian, it was normal to have macaroni on Sundays and Thursdays each week. And of course, since Friday was a no-meat day, if you didn’t have fish - you ate macaroni. I never tire of macaroni. It can be fixed so many different ways that you could never get tired of it.

There are so many sauces that you can use, and so many ingredients that you can add to make wonderful dishes.

But today I was going to make something completely different than macaroni. Until last night/early this morning…………..

You see - where I live - we don’t get tornadoes and we don’t have systems in place with sirens to warn us to get to shelters. But with the storms we had going through here last night, and a tornado heading this way in the middle of the night - WHAT DO I DO? My knowledge of tornado-safety (?) comes from watching movies like, “Tornado,” “Atomic Twister,”, “Twister,” and, of course, “The Wizard of Oz”!! Okay - stop rolling on the floor laughing. I prefer to stay in the kitchen - it’s safer than the outside world! LOL! (and it keeps me out of trouble - sometimes!)

But seriously, when it’s storming outside, and it’s the black of night - you can’t see anything coming! We had so much rain that I felt like my home was under Niagara Falls! And this tornado warning/watch/whatever was on until 9 this morning. So dummass me stayed up ALL NIGHT LONG so that I can get us down into the basement. They say it sounds like a train when it is coming. I know that sound - we have trains right down the street from us. Like THAT is going to help. I can just see me rounding up everything because a train is on the tracks!

Needless to say - the tornado warning/watch/whatever moved south of us - far enough that we didn’t have to worry. But you never can tell. So I went to bed at 9 this morning and slept for an hour and a half, I’m dragging my butt, I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone, and my plans for a nice meal today were blown away with the storm. And it was a perfect day for oven cooking - it’s cold, damp - just right for warming up the house and the tummy.

So I resorted to macaroni. I’ve been wishing for macaroni with beans anyway so I heated my big skillet and placed a frozen solid lump of ground beef in it; “working it down” so I can season it with Kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper, ground fennel, garlic, parsley, onion powder.



No way was I going to make a “normal” spaghetti sauce - I just wanted to cook and get it over with. So I added a small can of tomato paste, 2 paste cans of water, a can (14.5 oz.) diced tomatoes, seasoned with more salt, pepper, parsley, basil, marjoram, onion powder, paprika, a pinch of chili powder and red pepper flakes, garlic and a sprinkle of fresh grated Pecorino Romano.



Then I rinsed a can of kidney beans and added those to the skillet. I let that simmer away until my macaroni was cooked.


Meanwhile, I boiled my water, and cooked small rigatoni. Drained and added to skillet.



Made a quick salad - lettuce, tomatoes, onion with olive oil and vinegar; seasoned. Add a slice of hearty Italian bread - and it was all done in less than 45 minutes!



Now - the sun is shining - it’s still cold - and the storms may come back tonight. But I think this “tornado scare” is over for us.

And I need some zzzzzzzz’s!

(stop laughing at me…….)