I Miss My Wife

I MISS MY WIFE more today than yesterday.  For family reasons, we've had to spend a good deal of time separated over the past year.  The reasons involve a house in a foreign country, children on the move, a loved one fighting illness, grandchildren we see mostly on a flat screen, and getting on each other's nerves from time to time.  So there, I said it.

Heading into year 44 of marriage, you would think that spending some time apart is not a bad thing. We've heard the lines -- absence makes the heart grow fonder, recharges the juices, makes you appreciate what you may have taken for granted.

Truisms.  I really do miss togetherness, her smile, her touch, her thoughtfulness, her help, and 

Her cooking.  I tried to make spaghetti bolognese yesterday.  So simple but oh so sly in its resistance to adaptation.  With me in the foreign house and my wife stateside,  I tried to follow whatever recipes came to mind.  None did, so I read instructions on the pasta package that my brain translated:

Pour water in pot.  Add some salt.  Bring to boil, throw noodles in pot, turn down heat and stir to your heart's desire for eight or nine minutes. When done, pour the pasta pot into a strainer to drain the water.  Meantime, take the thawed ground beef and spice it up a bit.  Put some olive oil in a pan and heat it up.  Add the chunk of beef and chop it into easily digestible lumps with a spatula or something.  Add tomato sauce to taste and stir it up.

Since I had no tomato sauce, the beef lumped solo.   The lack of key ingredients is one reason why I resist recipes.  There must be thousands on the web for spaghetti bolognese.  And all of them will have one, two or three things that make you go to the store.  No time.  Too hungry.

Two hands are stirring and chopping as the minutes go by.  Everything looks good to go when the clock says it's time. I remembered someone telling me that well-cooked pasta sticks to the wall when thrown.  Not necessarily true.

So I ready the plate.  Fish noodles with a pasta fork, then scoop beef lumps and some natural juices that arose during the cooking process.  This goes to plan,  if you like snowball-sized clumps of pasta topped by lumpy beef and fairly watery sauce.

Which I do.  With ketchup, as my wife knows. She left just enough in the fridge.