Of Bee Stings and Spaghetti Sauce

Since school started a couple of days ago, I've made it a habit to sit outside on our swing to wait for my daughter's bus home. I typically hold the baby and watch my 3 year old play in the sandbox and just relax for a few minutes until she arrives, all smiles, from kindergarten. But today, well today I was assaulted. That's right, assaulted. I was the innocent victim of a vicious bee attack. I felt a slight tickle on my forehead and simply went to brush at it with the back of my hand when...WHAM! The culprit, a digger bee, stung me right on my knuckle.

Fortunately for me, the sting from a digger bee is usually much more mild than that from a honeybee and the resulting wheal and redness were gone completely in about an hour. It's still a little sore if I touch it, but not terrible otherwise. I'm pretty sure I'll live.

On a happier note...today was spaghetti sauce making day. My 6 year old daughter took charge of her own genovese basil plant last March and as you can see from the picture above, it's gotten quite large. It's probably about time to be slimmed down and repotted. Genovese basil is typically used for pesto sauce but I love it for spaghetti sauce because of it's pungent aroma and strong flavor.

I typically cook my spaghetti sauce low and slow for several hours (about 5 total) to cut the acidity and allow the flavors to mesh together. My spaghetti sauce is pretty simple. It's just 1 large mason jar of home grown tomato juice, 1 medium mason jar of homegrown tomato paste, about 2 tsp (give or take) of fresh chopped basil, 2 tbs of extra virgin olive oil, two pinches of salt, a pinch or two of pepper (you can tell I'm really precise when I make this), a few chopped oregano leaves, one chopped white onion and viola! you have spaghetti sauce