What you know bout Spaghetti Sauce?

          For this blog, I made sauce. I cheated and bought a jar of sauce from Winco, but it was more of a base than anything else. I ended up adding nearly my whole fridge and cabinet. Once I started, I just could not stop adding. And the result was wonderful.
          I chopped vegetables. I chopped many vegetables. First came the onions; the most intense, smelly onions that have been grown in my parent's garden and ingested by their son. I cut them in half to start with, and tossed the large slices that followed into a small Tupperware, where they landed into a bath of jalapeno and garlic juice, extracted from jars I had in my fridge. I continued focusing on the onions until I had three whole onions soaking. This is also when I realized that I may have overdone it. Well, honestly, I never thought that. These onions were great, and I did not mind being overpowered by them in this sauce. But, sadly, my girlfriend is not the biggest fan. But what does she like? Many jalapenos. And in my fridge? Why yes, many jalapenos. For my recipe, I cut and added four jalapenos from my collection into the same Tupperware, leaving the seeds and insides intact. I even grabbed my lone green pepper, and chunked it up to add more veggies in.

          After gathering all the cut vegetables together, I melted a 1/4 stick of butter in my medium sized pot, and added some oregano and cumin for a bit of flavor. After it was melted and simmering, I poured the Tupperware of juice and veggies into the mixture. As that cooked, I moved on to heating up the jar sauce in another pot, bringing it to a light boil before adding in a cup of a fine, well-aged $6 bottle of Barefoot Cab, and a can of Hy-Top diced tomatoes. Taking the first whiff of the concoction was painful. It consisted of a nice burning sensation as I huffed up mainly wine. But after mixing the sauce, the smell became comforting, flowing into my nose and running down onto my taste buds. I opened a can of black olives I found in my cabinet  and poured them in. I lifted the cover off the veggie pot, stirred it, crunched an onion slice in my mouth, and decided they were ready to head into my sauce. I took a taste of the sauce, and it was ready. But this is also when I realized I forgot two things: the noodles, and the meatballs. I set my girlfriend on meatball duty as I gave myself the duty of watching the sauce, tasting the sauce, tasting the wine, and tasting both at the same time.
           To form the balls made of ground pork, she used a combination of crushed Juanita's tortilla chips, some canola oil, a little Lea & Perrins, and finished the mixture with some salt and chile powder. She then grabbed a hunk of meat, rolled it all in the mixture, formed the balls and placed them into another container to wait with the rest until they were ready to place on the baking sheet. When they were put in the oven, it would be 35 minutes until we could enjoy our dinner. And 35 minutes later, we had the meatballs sizzling and the noodles softened and drained. We made ginormous piles on our plates of the cheap, Winco noodles that never seem to cook well. The topmost picture on this blog does not show justice to the obnoxiously chunky and delicious sauce. I do not have a picture with the sauce on noodle action, but I also did not use my phone or camera the whole time while eating. The continuous snarfing down of the noodles, meat, veggies, and sauce was too time-consuming in itself. My girlfriend and I did not have any contact with each other through most of the meal. My experiment worked out well for me. Have any of you had experience making sauces?      
               

Patty's Kitchen: Affordable Alcohol and Food for the College Aged Who Enjoy Eating.

         Ah, Patty's Kitchen. A wonderful haven for students to flock to after class, grab a cheap mug of brew, and eat some free chips and salsa in it's outdoor patio seating. It is normally open from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. but I have found myself there a bit later than that, and the service doesn't mind. But my knowledge of the place really stops at the alcohol and the chips. I have eaten from the main menu before, which has dishes ranging from an enchilada meal for $6.99 to a Big Vandal burrito for $27.49(One which I have never seen, but I bet it requires a small regime to lift it), but it has been a couple years since I treated myself to a meal here. 
          I woke up in the late morning after being released from the hospital and my lady friend decided that we just had to walk (or in my case, crutch) over across town to Patty's because she wanted the breakfast burrito she craves constantly. We arrived at the restaurant, she ordered her food immediately but I had to spend a bit more time to look at their menu. There was not much on it. Altogether, for Breakfast and Lunch menu, there were 14 items, but at this sort of restaurant, if you are not getting the massive burritos or the enchiladas covered in delicious red or green sauce, what else would you order?

          After an extensive gander at the menu, I went with the Patty's Smothered Burrito (8.99), because it gave me the choice of having delicious molé sauce at an extra $1.00, which consists of different peppers and a bit of chocolate. Plus the picture just looked so good. We grabbed our drinks, and headed over to a secluded area of large tables and sat down. I grabbed the most recent Argonaut to give a glance over, but as usual, that lasted about two minutes. But after about that two minutes, our server came with the chips and salsa anyone would expect at a Mexican joint. They come with two types of salsa, a red with a tiny kick to it (but not too much) and a milder green salsa. Both sauces will get eaten, but for the two cups you get, the one little bucket of chips is nearly not enough. But, we requested more chips and salsa, and everything went fine.
          Then, our food came. The breakfast burrito was placed in front of my girlfriend, but that didn't matter at all. I smelt the molé. I saw just the tip as I turned my head to watch it be placed in front of me. It was large, it was quite literally smothered, and it had a great scent, and that scent led to a taste in my mouth, and the salivating began. I thought, at first, that possibly my mouth and nose were just itching for something good. After all, I had been eating hospital food, or dried pork chop from a bed pan, for the past couple days, and had not had contact with this outdoor world except for Canada Dry Ginger Ale. But I was wrong. I had to stop myself from prematurely plunging my knife in and ripping the first piece of burrito from the beautiful presentation to take a damn picture. Technology was the bane of my munch fest. Picture taken, first cut, first taste. The molé was rich and had a strong taste, and the vegetables all blended well together. The lettuce was still fresh, the tomatoes still popped, and the onions crunched like they came straight out of the garden. But what really struck me was the picodillo, or shredded beef. Damn, that meat was great. Large chunks of it barreled out of the massive burrito, but when I cut into them, they tore easy, and made eating the dish more of a pleasure than a chore.    
          The best part of this burrito though had to be the fact that every cut with a fork and knife led to well rounded balance of ingredients. I have had issues at some restaurants that if you take a cut out of the left side of the burrito, all you get is lettuce. Right side? Meat. In the middle? Beans, and maybe a mix of the other two regions. But with this smothered behemoth, every cut had every thing that the burrito consisted of. I finished the whole meal, and though I felt large, I was definitely in charge. 

Ratings based on a 1-10 scale:
Price: 9 out of 10
          I gave it a point off just because I am always disappointed spending over 5 bucks on a meal. Nothing wrong with the price for the amount of food you get, just a personal preference from being poor. 
Presentation: 10 out of 10
          It looked amazing when it came out, and the plate looked amazing when it was all gone. 
Taste: 11 out of 10
          It tipped the scale for me. This could be because of the 4 days of hospital food as a mentioned, but this stuff also tasted like a true food. Something real, not something processed or straight from a fast food joint. Especially the molé, Jesus.
Service: 9 out of 10
          Extra chips, no hassle, delivered food and left us alone for the most part. It was wonderful.

          All in all, Patty's is a great place to eat along with a place to go for a cheap after class beer. Cheers to you, Kitchen. You shine in a town of decent eating.