I call this Mustgo Spaghetti because it helps you use all your leftover (must-go cause they gonna spoil) veggies from your fridge. It takes about 30 minutes from stovetop to table and that’s including boiling the noodles. Go through your veggie drawer and pull out whatever you would like in the spaghetti sauce. You can make it vegetarian or bolognese; peppers, celery, mushrooms, onions (both green and round), tomatoes, zucchini or squash are just some of the additions. Tonight I started with 1/2 lb of ground beef and one Italian sausage. I added a couple of cloves of minced garlic and 1/2 a sweet onion diced.

I heated my cast iron pan and at the same time put on a pot of water to boil. From my veggie drawer I used half a tray of cremini mushrooms and a small wilty celery head, I also had a half bunch of parsley. Just a sidebar, I don’t like peppers so those will never be in my fridge but if you love ’em, go for it. I sliced the mushrooms thicker for texture. I did the same with the celery. I like texture in my sauce instead of it all being soft and mushy. If you have peppers just julienne them. They cook pretty quickly and you don’t want them to disappear in the sauce.

I threw in enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan, tossed in my meats, I waited until all the meat was browned and then I threw in all my veggies at the same time, let it all sweat down, poured in about 1 cup of leftover red wine. Then I added jarred spaghetti sauce or you can add a large can of crushed tomatoes. Now here’s my secret addition to my sauce. I add it to jarred sauce, cans of diced or crushed tomatoes, basically whatever I’m using to build my red sauce. Know one will know its in there but you.

Let it all simmer for about 10-15 minutes. If you are using canned tomatoes simmer for about 30 mins. Just before I turned off the heat I added a can of sliced black olives. When your water boils put in a good 3tbs of kosher salt. Add your noodle of choice. The girls wanted thin spaghetti so I used half a box of dried noodles, half a box since I was only feeding three. I ended up boiling the other half after dinner so they would have leftovers for their lunches. Just a few tips: there’s gonna be a lot going on at once so turn the burners on medium so you don’t burn anything, keep a close eye on the noodles, no one likes soggy noodles… al dente always taste better for some reason. Have fun with it, the next time you make it will be better then the last. This is one of my favorite recipes in my arsenal.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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