Gross Sauce (Get Rid Of Some Stuff)

The bug bites you every now and then.  Get rid of some stuff.  

We have a couple pantries in our house, one in the kitchen, another over by the garage. Stuff we use regularly we keep in the kitchen, naturally. Stuff that’s not on deck gets stored over by the garage.  Pepper corns, cans of chick peas, back-up jars of marmalade and jams, peanut butter and nutella, tomato paste, boxes of pasta.

It’s unavoidable–back-up becomes pile-up. I could probably count six jars of honey over there, impulse purchases little related to actual need, honey we will never use. A while back, finding old peas, old beans, old tomato puree, cans one of our kids brought home from college, I made get-rid-of-some-stuff soup. There was a certain lightness of being that seasoned that soup.

Today in the kitchen a bunch of roma tomatoes caught my eye. A week ago I bought them to peel and chop over mozzarella. I did. A meaty tomato, not much sugar in them, Romas are not great chopped over mozzarella. Get rid of some stuff. I blanched and peeled them, unseeded and chopped them, and stirred them into a big leek saute; a good big leek, but an old leek that had been in the fridge for a couple weeks.  

With a little olive oil added, salt and pepper, a little butter, the sauce cooked 30 minutes and made an excellent rice dish. I would have been excellent with pasta as well. I’m pretty sure there’s some pasta in the pantry over by the garage.