The Carnivore Agenda, Spaghetti edition

Make no mistake: When given the chance, time, ingredients and caffeine, I would much rather cook pretty much everything from scratch. It's hard to tell from nearly every entry here, but I am ALL for spending 8 hours in the kitchen working on two or three dishes.

That is not the case, today.

An 8-item grocery list turned into a full cart, and in the interest of coming up with a quick dinner we decided on Spaghetti, the Faking It version.

1 box spaghetti noodles
1 lb ground beef
1 jar spaghetti sauce of your choice*
Roughly chopped spinach
Chopped parsley
Garlic
Grated ginger
Oregano
Chipotle (powder or en adobo)
White pepper
Bay leaves

The most pain-in-the-ass part of making spaghetti is getting that huge pot of water to BOIL ALREADY. Huge pot of water, some sea salt and a few bay leaves thrown in. While that's taking its sweet time, brown the beef and drain all the fat. Lower heat to a simmer, pour spaghetti sauce in (*I like the mushroom or meat ones). Add spinach, a clove of crushed garlic, some ginger, oregano, as much chipotle as you think you can handle (I add just a dash for flavor, not heat), white pepper, a couple of bay leaves. Simmer that until your water FINALLY BOILS, and leave it on there through the 9-11 minutes it'll take the pasta to cook (watch for the splatters). Just before the pasta is done, add the chopped parsley and another clove of crushed garlic into the sauce.
Drain pasta, remove sauce from heat and stuff your face with awesome.

Now, the garlic toast thing really works better with a baguette or something to that effect, but I don't have that kind of foresight when I do groceries. Soften some butter in the microwave (soften, not melt), add salt to taste, crushed garlic (because there just isn't enough garlic in this post already) and whatever herbs rock your boat. Spread over some bread and put it in the oven at 300F for some 10 minutes or so.

If you're worried about the garlic, that's what wine is for. Tomato dishes = red wine.