Pots of Bolognese Sauce Simmering While Grading Exams

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Now that my parents are here for a few months, the kitchen has been in full gear with constant cooking of large amounts of food to freeze.  Yesterday, Mom made homemade 'brodo' while I was at work, otherwise known as chicken broth.  This will be used for 'tortellini in brodo' that we traditionally prepare for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.  And today, while I was home grading my students' exams and papers, my mother made two gigantic pots of our family's Bolognese sauce.  Some Italian-Americans call this 'ragu', while others say "Sunday gravy", but we have always simply called it spaghetti sauce!  Well, no matter what one chooses to call this classic recipe, my entire family could not live without it's incredible taste!  This truly is my husband's favorite thing to put in his mouth and devour!

One tall pot cooks on the stove for a few hours, while a shorter, but super wide pot of sauce stews on the other side.  The perforated pizza pan under the pot is placed there to prevent the sauce from burning on the bottom of the pot . . . even if the stove is set on low temperatures, you don't ever want this to burn, or the whole batch will be ruined.

Mmmm . . . the whole house is filled with the smell of Italian mama love!

I'd mentioned a few weeks ago about this time of year (nearing the end of Fall Semester) and needing to pay more time and attention to my responsibilities at the office, rather than blogging.  So here's just one of the stacks of papers and exams that I was reading and grading while Mom worked hard, but happily, in the kitchen.  She loves to cook and do all of this for her kids, and we are so fortunate and grateful!

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After the sauce is fully cooked, we filled containers for freezing the sauce (let them cool down before placing in the freezer).  We like to fill several different sizes of containers so that we can have sauce on hand for larger groups, such as when all of our kids come home with their own families, as well as for smaller dinners when it's just hubby and myself.  Making this sauce is truly a labor of love!  Grazie Mama, tiamo!

The recipe is listed on the sidebar and can also be found by clicking on the photo link for Bolognese Sauce on the sidebar as well.  For this batch of sauce we also added fresh ground pork (and sometimes we'll add fresh ground veal).  We also added four super large bags of frozen tomatoes from my summer garden . . . these add a fresh, zingy flavor of summer to the pot and make a tremendous difference in flavor.

So when you find an afternoon when you have a large window of time, fill your kitchen with the wonderful aroma of this traditional Italian sauce, and maybe get a little work done on the side like I did, when the pots are slowly simmering on the stove.  With this amount, you'll always have on hand some fresh, homemade sauce ready to heat up and ladle over some cooked pasta at the last minute!


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