This was to be a picture of the
meatballs, but the picture
just didn’t turn out very well.

Meal: Spaghetti with red sauce and meatballs, focaccia
Approximate per person cost: $1.97
Actual hands-on time: about 20 minutes
Leftovers: Half a loaf of focaccia, half a serving of pasta

Last night’s dinner was a bit of a cheat - we already had meatballs frozen from an attempt at meatball soup back in December, so even though spaghetti and (homemade) meatballs sounds complicated, it was pretty easy. This is the sort of “cheating” that you can use to your advantage, though; if you make something like meatballs that can be labor intensive (though homemade meatballs weren’t as hard as I thought they were going to be), freeze part of the batch for a later meal. It’s a little more work at the time, and a lot less work later on.

Preparation went as follows:

- About 2.5 hours before we wanted to eat (the 1.5 hours for the dough cycle, 20 minutes for the baking, and time to measure things out, get the oven preheated, the dough in the oven, etc): start the bread dough in the bread machine.
- About 1.5 hours before we wanted to eat: prepare the sauce and the meatballs.
- About half an hour before we wanted to eat: pull the dough out of the machine, shape it on the pan, preheat the oven, put the dough in the oven.
- After the dough had been in the oven for 10 minutes: cook the pasta (in this case, Vita-Spelt spelt spaghetti. It’s organic, and the grains are grown either in the U.S. or Canada, which is better food-miles-wise than most of the pasta on our grocery store shelves, most of which is imported from Italy.)
- When the pasta is ready: drain the pasta, pull the bread out of the oven, and feast.

The recipe for the focaccia came from here. Using the bread machine dough cycle to do most of the work, the bread was a quick piece of work with great results. I had to measure out the ingredients, shape the dough on the pan, and preheat the oven. 10 minutes worth of work, tops.

I made the spaghetti sauce in our slow cooker; I think it comes out tasting better, and it means that I don’t have to tend it at all. (I have a habit of turning up tomato sauce too high when it’s on the stove. It overheats and starts making a mess. However, if you’re not absent-minded like I am, a pot on the stove works just fine for the sauce.) Doing the sauce in the slow cooker also meant not having to thaw the meatballs. I just threw them into the slow cooker with the sauce, and they came out perfectly. The sauce itself was a 28 ounce can of tomato puree (we use Muir Glen Organics, because that’s what our co-op stocks), with water added until it was at a thickness that I liked, and garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, dried thyme, and dried basil to taste. I added the meatballs, gave it a stir to distribute them, and let it cook. The sauce and meatballs cooked on high for about an hour and a half, but they would have been ready at about an hour. We didn’t need that much sauce for spaghetti for the two of us; I knew that we had homemade pizza planned for tonight, so I went ahead and made extra sauce to make tonight easier. Also, we didn’t eat all the meatballs that I thought we would, so those can go on the pizza tonight as well.

Therein lies a tip: By planning out your meals for the week, you can purposely make too much of one thing, the sauce in this case, to use in a completely different meal a few days later. Making extra sauce took no more extra time, but it will save time tonight when we use the sauce for our homemade pizza. All we’ll do to the sauce tonight is add some extra oregano after we spread it on the pizza.

Now is perhaps a good time to talk about time; I’m a graduate student on semester break, which means that I’m home to do things like start bread a couple hours before dinner. Also, we tend to eat dinner later than many people do. This will continue to be the case when classes start again on Monday, as my schedule is pretty open and I’m lucky enough not to be doing the 8 to 5 thing, though you could occasionally catch me grading papers at midnight. However, cooking dinner at home (and not just opening bags of frozen food) can be done easily, even on a weeknight, and even if you work 8 to 5. If you want fresh bread for a meal, check to see if your bread machine has a delay cycle**, where you can measure out the ingredients before you go to work and the machine will fire itself up in the afternoon. Another option is to do prepatory cooking, like making meatballs, on the weekends, so that most of your work is already done for you. If you have older children who get home before you, they may be able to handle tasks like starting sauce in the crockpot or starting bread in a bread machine. If you’re making something like stir fry that requires a bit of labor but not an expanse of time, don’t be afraid to draft roommates, partners, or children into the kitchen; cooking together is a great way to wind down from your day and get in some quality time together. There are creative solutions to the problem of eating at home that don’t involve take-out or convenience foods. Also, we’ll be posting more quick meals starting next week, as I’ll be in class late two nights a week, and much as I love to cook, even I’m not going to be starting something complicated at 9:00 at night when I’ve just gotten in from class.

** Our friend Jill pointed out that the delay cycle should not be used if the bread recipe calls for eggs, milk, or anything else that requires refrigeration. She has a very good point. We wouldn’t want anyone to get sick this way.

Thanks, Jill!