Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Having recently had a minor dispute with my mother-in-law over this very topic, I just want to get on my soapbox to say this:

Mixing the sauce in with the spaghetti is way better than having them separate. Now I'm talking lazy man's spaghetti here, where you just boil some noodles and heat up a jar of sauce.

The reasons why mixing rules:

- Less dirty dishes. You don't have to have a separate pan to heat up the sauce, as you can pour the sauce right in with the noodles after they're drained and let it warm up on the stove for a minute. I'm a firm believer in using as few dishes as possible, and I even strain the noodles with the lid so I don't have to get the collander dirty.
- You don't run out of or waste extra sauce. It's impossible to portion out the right amount of separate sauce and noodles.
- The noodles don't stick together.
- If you have leftovers, the noodles don't get crusty and sickly.

That is all.

Perhaps you should just stop making lazy man's spaghetti.

This was a double post. Ignore.

Mixing them together is good. My family never did because my family never buys spaghetti sauce. As such I have acquired a distinct dislike for store bought sauces, and only eat them when forced to.

bismark wrote:Perhaps you should just stop making lazy man's spaghetti.

Why? I like it and it's easy when I'm stressed out. I'm just talking about sauce mixing options, not the merits of the meal itself.

Heh. I wanted to do that last time I made spaghetti (I had only heard of it recently) but couldn't because various siblings would have protested to having sauce at all.

My mom made her own sauce for a number of years, and I was devastated when she switched to the bottled stuff. But I've grown to not really care anymore, and I think mixing the sauce in sounds like a great idea. Hooray for lazy cooking!

Making one's own sauce is only necessary if it can be done with fresh tomatoes. Otherwise, CERTAIN varieties of purchased sauce can actually be fairly pallatable.

That does sound easy, but . . . my husband drenches his spaghetti in sauce, and I like just a little bit in comparison. So we need them seperate in our house.

I grew up with them separate. Mostly so we can each decide how much sauce we want on our spaghetti. And I'm cool with that, because mixing them together reminds me a lot of my elementary cafeteria spaghetti. Yellow always combines them. I don't care that much, so I usually make the decision each time. Often asking him which he'd rather have. So we often mix them. But not always.

Today we had spaghetti for lunch and we had it separate. I was babysitting two girls and their mom who dropped in for lunch, plus Dragon Baby and one girl doesn't like sauce and I was letting Dragon Baby eat her own spaghetti, so I did hers plain for sake of my carpet.

Dear krebscout,

I love that your outraged soapbox rant is about spaghetti sauce.

Love,

ahem.

Here's another point: what if you do either meatballs or simply ground beef in your spaghetti? Then you have to use another pan entirely anyways to brown the meat. I know that isn't what you said you were doing, but if you're going to have to pans anyways, might as well just add the sauce to the meat and let the noodles stand alone.

Why? I like it and it's easy when I'm stressed out. I'm just talking about sauce mixing options, not the merits of the meal itself.

because then there would be one less thing to argue/get upset about and one more tasty meal to enjoy.

Marduk wrote:Here's another point: what if you do either meatballs or simply ground beef in your spaghetti? Then you have to use another pan entirely anyways to brown the meat. I know that isn't what you said you were doing, but if you're going to have to pans anyways, might as well just add the sauce to the meat and let the noodles stand alone.

This.

I rarely have spaghetti sauce on it's own and thus generally keep it separate.

bismark wrote:

Why? I like it and it's easy when I'm stressed out. I'm just talking about sauce mixing options, not the merits of the meal itself.

because then there would be one less thing to argue/get upset about and one more tasty meal to enjoy.

Oh gosh. Do I really have to explain that this is a silly post, and I know it? I was hoping I didn't need to add an asterisk clarifying that by "dispute" I mean "we discussed it the other night while eating spaghetti," and that I chose stronger language to emphasize the triviality of it all. Way to kill a joke.

ahem. wrote:Dear krebscout,

I love that your outraged soapbox rant is about spaghetti sauce.

Love,

ahem.

Dear ahem,

It's because I'm a shallow person whose most pressing concern is spaghetti.

Love,

qrebsqotl

We always poured the cold sauce from the jar over the spaghetti and then microwaved each plate individually. That way you don't even get the sauce in the pasta pot and it is even easier to clean up after.
But I guess the whole microwave thing is kind of ghetto, huh? I never really thought about it until just now.

krebscout wrote: Love,

qrebsqotl

Whoa. The long-awaited incarnation of Quetzalcoatl is revealed!

(The omniscience she gets from the Board, the omnipotence; from her being a god.)

I usually make my own sauce, but I mix the leftovers together because it's way easier to reheat that way. I don't own a microwave, so I just put it in a non-stick pan with a lid to reheat it. So much easier if the sauce is already mixed in.

These are the two main ways I make spaghetti sauce.

With canned tomatoes - brown a package of honey garlic sausage (taken out of the casing) and add chopped onions at the same time so they cook in the sausage grease. The one brand of honey garlic sausages without gluten that I can get is also low-fat, so I don't bother draining them since there's not much grease. Then I add a can of crushed or diced tomatoes, a can of tomato sauce, whatever spices I'm currently into, a few Parmesan rinds, and I simmer it for at least an hour and two if I can wait that long.

With fresh tomatoes - start by sauteing garlic and onions in olive oil over low heat until the onions are clear. Add a whole bunch of chopped fresh tomatoes and whatever herbs I want, and cook until it gets liquidy. Sometimes I add chunks of cheddar cheese and near the end and cook until the cheese incorporates itself into the sauce. I don't usually put meat in my fresh tomato sauces.

And in case anyone was wondering, I eat it with Tinkyada brown rice spaghetti, which I like way more than I ever liked wheat pasta.

Marduk wrote:Here's another point: what if you do either meatballs or simply ground beef in your spaghetti? Then you have to use another pan entirely anyways to brown the meat. I know that isn't what you said you were doing, but if you're going to have to pans anyways, might as well just add the sauce to the meat and let the noodles stand alone.

Mmm, this is an excellent point. Spaghetti is approximately 37 thousand times better with meat added.