Well, after this month, I think I may take a break from the recipe swaps on Recipezaar and focus on doing a tag game here and there and my Daring Baker's challenges. I'm finding that I am buying extra food for these things and we're trying to stick to a budget. We've been doing a lot better since I found The Grocery Game, but we're still trying to keep within reason and I also tend to forget about them until the end of the month feeling like I have so much time!
On the topic of The Grocery Game, I do recommend you try it out if you're interested in saving money on groceries! It's $1 for a month long trial, and then there is a small fee after that. We have saved so much in groceries by learning how to combine sales with coupons. I'd read that you should do a price book and use coupons and stock up at "rock-bottom" sales, but can't be bothered to track the sales like that. We have saved about 1/3-1/2 of our grocery bills each week because of this and the savings are getting even bigger now that we're getting through our "stockpiling" stage. I just think it's great so far, so does Lee and now when I go grocery shopping he asks me how much we saved! We're getting to buy fun food for less than we spent on just the basics!!!
I digress...
This post is supposed to be about rigatoni bolognese, so here we go. I had meant to make this on Tuesday night, I had looked at the times and saw the recipe said ½ hour cook time and ½ hour prep. I thought that meant that I should plan a full hour for the cooking. Well...it turned out that the sauce had to simmer for an hour, so it took more like an hour and a half to cook the dinner and by the time I was going to get started on Tuesday, it was getting later, so we just something else quick instead.
On Wednesday, I did set aside enough time to make it. It turned out pretty good, but I found I needed twice the amount of tomatoes that the recipe called for to have enough tomato sauce for the amount of rigatoni used. Lee didn't like the taste of the wine, so I would have to cut that back some more if I made this again, or find a better tasting wine than we used. I know you aren't supposed to cook with a wine you wouldn't drink, but neither one of us are big fans of alcohol, and I don't like red wine much on a good day (I'm a Pinot Grigio girl) so I don't see the point in spending too much money on something we don't use much, that is just meant for a bit of flavour.
I'm posting the recipe how I did make it and would adapt it for making again, but am linking to the original recipe if you would like to look at it.
Authentic Rigatoni Bolognese
2 carrots diced
2 ribs of celery, diced
½ white onion, diced
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 lb. ground meat (I used turkey)
½-1 cup red wine
1 29 ounce can crushed tomatoes
salt
pepper
½ lb. rigatoni
parlsey
- Heat olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add celery, carrots, and onion. Cook until soft.
- Add ground meat and cook until browned.
- Add wine, tomatoes, salt, and pepper and simmer for an hour on low heat or until sauce has thickened.
- When sauce is almost finished, cook rigatoni to package directions, drain, and mix with sauce.
- Plate and garnish with fresh parsley.
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