Mom's Spaghetti (or Beanie's Pisghetti)

Let's unpack that title, shall we?

If you were an adolescent or young adult around the Millennium, you automatically thought of a trailer park and an underground rap battle, right? The first part of the title is an nod to my husband finally catching up with the 90's --he's currently engrossed in a life-consuming love affair with Eminem.

John hasn't stopped talking about him all week.

This from the man who stared at me with a look of incredulity and almost horror when I sang along with every word from Eminem's Marshal Mathers album way back when we started dating. (I thought about sharing a picture of us as teenagers, but I'll save that bad boy for another day.) I'm excited though. He finally watched 8 Mile the other night, and I'm hoping that he'll now be able to sing along with "Lose Yourself" better than "durn nur durn nur durn nur, Mom's spaghetti!”

Nailed it.

His lack of preparation utterly ruins the professionalism of our road trip singalongs.

Beanie's Pisghetti, you ask? There's a lot to unload there. Because I eat a mostly plant-based diet and my husband is a meat-man, our daughter has grown up with a balance of the two.

An aside about my husband's love of meat: the very first meal he ever cooked for me in our tiny apartment was steak. That's it. A plate of steak. HOWEVER, he has come to embrace the mighty bean and he willingly cooks himself legumes and pulses while he's at work.

So, back to our daughter. She loves beans, she loves meat. She understands the ethics of eating meat with surprising maturity, truly. We are blown away with the depth of her understanding of it. She also knows how great beans are for you. And she thinks they're super delicious. You can often find her hovering around a bowl of freshly cooked beans, grazing away.

This has really explained nothing to you, has it? Let me actually break it down: to our sweet tiny, "spaghetti" has meat, "pisghetti" has lentils and veggies. Two separate dishes in her mind, with very different names to her. We first learnt about this dichotomy of hers when she was about two and a half and we went to a restaurant and she wanted "pisghetti," so we ordered her spaghetti. Nope. Big mistake. That's not what she wanted at all. There was an explosion of fury from our tiny toddler, ignited by hunger and anger at being misunderstood. It took us a few more language growths to understand her distinct definitions.

Pisghetti is her favourite food in the whole world. She asks for it weekly and I make it about once a month.

She loves it so much that that's what we served her friends at her fourth birthday party. Which was a shockingly epic party, by the way. She planned it. Mostly because I had run out of ideas. You see, her birthday is Boxing Day and that makes booking places impossible. Believe me, had I been able to hold her in an extra day, or even better, if she could have stayed in for four more weeks until her due date, I would have been much happier. I have a huge fear that her birthday will be overlooked in the chaos of Christmas and it breaks my heart. In case you're wondering what my husband and I do the night of Christmas Day (because that's clearly what's on your mind right now), we spend it turfing every stitch of Christmas back into storage and decking the house out in birthday decorations. Usually with a bottle or two of wine somewhere in there as we contemplate doing this for the next twenty years.

By the way, "turfing" in my family means to throw something. It's almost a correct definition from an old usage of the word, but not quite. You can thank my moma for that one. You'll likely see a whole pile of pseudo-words in my posts. They generally can be traced back to one source.

This is what happens when you let a four-year-old plan her party: A cherry-themed costume dance party. We had two weeks to execute it by the time she made up her mind. This was the result:

And it was amazing.

Everyone had a blast.

Except Charles.

He doesn't take well to change and this was not the basement he had been in earlier in the day. Sometimes I wonder if he regrets picking our family for all the crazy shenanigans he has to put up with. (Just WAIT until you see his Halloween costumes.)

And believe it or not, we spent $100 on the whole party. Food included. We fed twenty-four people for about $20. This pisghetti is super delicious and cheap. So cheap.

Another reason that this is the best recipe to start my blog off with is the change of seasons.

Hello, fall.

It's my favourite time of the year. I feel at peace in autumn. It's the perfect combination of the warm sun and the biting wind. Going outside at all hours of the day seems like a privilege after hiding away after 10 am through parts of August because forty degrees Celsius is no joke.

We hike in the fall more than any other time of the year. I've always, always, always loved the smell of fall. There's nothing like it. And the noticeably quieter woods are more peaceful as the birds aren't as active as they were a month ago. Although, I do love my birds, sometimes it's nice to not be bombarded by song all the time.

I think the same can be said for my wee one-- the questions, the singing, to constant chatter is usually the best part of my day--but sometimes, silence NEEDS to happen.

And of course, the colours.

They're just starting to peek out. I still marvel at them myself but since having a child, everything has a new magic. She likes to collect leaves of each colour and to compare the original green to its new shade of red, purple, or orange. Fall is an extremely magical time. We like to discuss the fairies of the woods adorning themselves in the most fantastically-coloured leaf dresses.

And whoever thinks burnt stumps serve no purpose just never looked at them properly.

They are the perfect stage for dances with the wind.

With the magic of fall comes our want of warm food and comfort. Bowls of soups, stews, pastas. And all the beautiful produce of the fall harvest lends itself to the foods that we crave at this time of year. It's a pretty neat coincidence, isn't it?

This almost leads us to the pisghetti. I can hear your collective "it's about damn time," but I'm going to let you in on one more of our favourite things to do in our family: meandering. Whether it's through words and thoughts, seeing where ideas connect and lend layers of meaning to other discussions, or in nature, where we just follow the flow of the area and investigate what we find along the way, without a purpose or an end destination. Our conversations are deep and varied and we never fail to find something fascinating on our adventures. Like this:

This was a piece of a log that was burnt in the 2003 firestorm. The charred bark has come apart like pieces of a forest puzzle. It is one the coolest finds. So meander, see what you discover, either in the deepest corner of your mind or at the little park down the street from you. I would love to hear about your meandering adventures.

Pisghetti.

The final reason to post about pisghetti first is because it was my first perfected vegetarian/vegan recipe. Maybe it can be yours, too. The cravings for childhood comforts will never leave you and while I was no longer eating meat, I wanted the same big bowl of pasta that I grew up eating. This is why I said in my first post that food isn't everything, but it's connected to everything. It's memories and emotions. I wanted to recreate the same feelings I had about my family recipe and make it vegetarian. Instead of ground beef, I use lentils, eggplant, and mushrooms. There's still the onion, garlic (A ton of garlic. I LOVE garlic. I'm not certain we can be friends if you don't.), and bell peppers. Of course, there's also tomatoes and all the herbs, dried and fresh. It's really not that different from how you might make your own spaghetti. It's approachable.

The key to getting the same deep flavours as spaghetti into my pisghetti is browning. Brown everything. Caramelize the veggies and their deep, umami flavours come out. There's a secret ingredient, too. Soy sauce. Or Bragg's Soy Seasoning. Or coconut sap soy replacement. Or tamari. Whatever you use, it will impart the same deep undertone that you're accustomed to in a meat sauce. Believe me, it's important.

A minor note and apologies to you, the dear reader who has made it this far, I don't have a fancy template for recipes yet. Call me cheap (I'm calling myself practical), but I'm not going to pay for a website with all the fancy bells and whistles like printable templates until I know that, one, I'll actually keep this up, and two, people actually follow along and enjoy my recipes. Until then, please bear with me and this terrible format.

And now behold: Pisghetti.

Let's do this.Recipe
1 tbsp. of olive oil or coconut oil
1 onion, finely diced
4-5 cloves of garlic, finely diced
1 bell pepper, any colour, finely diced
1 medium to large eggplant, diced
3 cups of mushrooms, diced
1 jar of tomato passata*
1 cup of dry green lentils, washed and picked over
2 cups of water, maybe more
1 tbsp. of dried basil1 tbsp. of dried oregano
1 tbsp. of dried parsley
1/2 tbsp. of onion powder
1/2 tbsp. of garlic powder
1 tbsp. of soy sauce or alternative
1 tsp. of black pepper
A smidge of salt, depending if you used a low-sodium alternative soy sauce
A few tbsps. of fresh basil and/or parsley, added right before serving.

Heat your oil in a big pot over medium heat.
Add in the onion and cook, stirring often until it starts to brown.
Add in the garlic for a few minutes until it starts to brown, then add in the bell pepper and cook until browning.
Add in the eggplant and mushrooms and cook until golden brown. (It really is all about the golden brown.)
Add in the tomatoes and scrape up any deliciousness that may have gotten stuck to the bottom of the pan.Add in the lentils, the water, and the spices. Make sure everything is covered with liquid, if not add enough water to do so.
Bring to a boil, then cover and cook on low for at least half an hour, ideally for an hour, stirring occasionally. The flavours will get deeper the longer it cooks.
Add in the fresh herbs just before serving over whole grain pasta (Rotini noodles are my preferred noodle as the little pieces of veg and lentils get stuck in all the ridges, creating the ultimate bite.).
You could also sprinkle it with mozzarella or parmesan as a finishing touch.
Enjoy with friends and family and maybe your neighbours. It makes a lot.
And yes, it freezes really, really well.

*I started using tomato passata in glass bottles years ago. This is a personal choice. However, passata is expensive compared to crushed tomatoes in a can ($2 for 600 ml vs $.90 for a 750 ml can, I believe, going off the best prices I could find. I've seen passata for as much as $6 a bottle!) So if you're not as crazy as I am, go with canned. Even better, used fresh or self-jarred. I dropped the bucket on jarring my tomatoes this year while they were in peak season. Oh well, there's always next year!

A Note: This can be made super speedily if you have a food processor and an Instant Pot. (I'm certain an entire love-letter to my Instant Pot will be coming in a post soon.) Just throw the veggies into your food processor in the order that they are added in the recipe and sauté them in the pot just the same (i.e., while the garlic is cooking, throw the bell pepper in the processor, then add the pepper to the pot and process the eggplant, etc.). It'll result in a finer, less chunky sauce, but still delicious without a ton of work. And then it only needs to cook for 25 minutes on high pressure and it's done. Easy peasy.

I hope you've enjoyed my meander with me. There's always food at the end of journey when I'm around. If you make my beanie's pisghetti, please leave a comment and let me know!

We're off to meander some more, I hope you are, too.