The nice thing about all theses recipes is that they can be combined by using what you have on hand...and what you like. I'm making one this morning for the weekend. I always have olives, pulled some pecans out of the freezer from the holidays that i will toast and lightly chop. Roast a red pepper on the gas burner. My basil bed is doing well but not enough for a pesto so i'll pinch off a dozen tops but the cilantro is bolting so i'll add that at the end with a squeeze of lime. Tomatoes are a month away but i have a dozen early sungolds (the size of marbles)...I'll cut in half and toss on top fresh. i have a bit of fetta left i need to use. A dozen sugar snap peas sliced in half. Not enough for a side dish. I made succotash wed and have an ear of corn left and half a zucchini and squash i'll use up. (my local Stop-n-Shop grocery has a local farm stand set up inside) A wooden cart with an umbrella, haha. I usually prefer simplicity and just a few ingredients but this time of year i have a little bit of everything...reminds me of my MIL's saturday soup my husband grew up on...all the bits of the weeks meals tossed in a soup pot with homemade stock from the freezer, maybe some rice or pasta. Not really left-overs using fresh, but certainly a 'garden party' pasta. Still a light sauce. I'm going to make a full lb so it will be a side dish tonight with cod cakes, a cold salad for tomorrows lunch, (DH will have some for breakfast, lol). Sunday night's return from the mountains i'll put the leftovers in a casarole, top with extra cheese, 'yogurt milk', panko and any grill leftovers, (lamb sausage!) and make an adult mac-n-cheese. (i have some rich stinky fancy munster i need to use up). A completely different meal when baked and toasted. sallyparis-love your blog. My husband caught me grating a few tomatoes last season, "now what are you doing!?", haha. Works great in a hurry but needs a big bowl. Love warm pasta tossed in all that yummy juice when tomatoes are so sweet and abundant. tricia-haha, the harried greek housewife. Now i know what to call it! Gwlolo- No need to 'cook' the sauce, but a few ingredients do 'brighten' flavors with a few minutes in a large wide saucepan, just a few minutes as the pasta is finishing. Add the warm pasta to the saucepan and toss. A caprese is nice just on top fresh when serving along with toasted nuts if using. If you have an abundance of fresh basil, some is nice tossed in the warm pasta but save most for the top garnish. Arugula is delightful as well.

I really don't like Spaghetti Sauce that not cooked to long. Reminds me of the way they did it in the Army. Heat the tomatoes and dump it over the Pasta. Why have a no cooked sauce when you can make a large batch , when you have the time and freeze it in portions, with meat. Here is a meal that is very versatile. It is a traditional old Italian dish , that can be added to and prepared in 20 minutes Spaghetti with Garlic and Oil Aglio E Olio translated is Garlic and Oil Ingredients: For 2 to 3 Servings ½ pound of Spaghetti #8 or #9 ½ teaspoon of garlic powder or 3 cloves chopped ¼ teaspoon of Onion Powder 1 tablespoon chopped Parsley 1 tablespoon of Basil ½ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon of Black Pepper ½ cup of Virgin Olive Oil Grated Parmesan or Romano Cheese ( sprinkled when serving ) 1. Cook the Spaghetti until al dente ( 8 to 10 minutes ) 2. While the Spaghetti is cooking, put the Olive Oil into another pot, large enough to hold the cooked Spaghetti add 1/3 cup of water or Chicken Stock, the Olive oil, and all the Spices. Simmer very low, about 8 minutes. 3. When the Pasta is cooked , Drain the water and add it to the pot with the Spices and Oil. Mix well and add whatever spices and salt to taste. Put this in a serving bowl and add the Grated cheese An alterative is to add sliced and cut Green Peppers to the Olive Oil first and simmer until tender. As in step 2. Then add the spices and continue thru Step 3. Beat an egg with some of the Pasta water (not hot) and add to the Pasta and mix well, before placing in the serving bowl. Cooked Broccoli can be substituted for Green Peppers. Or both. Bon Appetite !!! Here is another: Hi Everyone: I did the Red bell Pepper thing again tonight . I simmered Roasted sliced Red Bell Peppers and 5 Garlic cloves chopped, in 1/4 cup of Olive Oil. Loaded it with Chopped Parsley, Basil Flakes ( the top fell off, so I added a little more Basil ) pinch of Oregano, onion powder , Black pepper and a pinch of ground red pepper. Meanwhile , I cooked 1/2 pound of spaghetti #9, drained it and put the pepper mess on this and mixed it. While the spaghetti was hot I beat an egg in 1/2 cup of warm water with 1 teaspoon of Chicken Soup Base and dumped this on top and mixed it good, with some grated Parmesan Cheese and salt to taste. The egg mixture makes a thin sauce. Added more Cheese when served. It was delicious!!!!!!!!! You have to try it. LOU 

Ya know, Dances, you can always make those convenience products from scratch if you want. Personally, I prefer the freshness of home-made, and would never even consider buying something like a jar of roasted red peppers etc. I do agree with your feelings about using just a small amount of a special product. I just went through that with tamarind. Needed just a walnut-sized piece of pulp, but the smallest package was a full pound. Leafy: Nothing surprises me when it comes to how much people need to have their hands held. I remember a story Friend Wife and I did, "In Search of the Perfect Crabcake." Basically, it was a tour of Maryland's Eastern Shore based on food tripping. Folks repeated that trip all summer. With copies of the article clutched in their hands they'd visit only the restaurants we mentioned, and would order, in each one, exactly what we had eaten there.

Merry Christmas Ginny- Not much time this busy morning for posting, and this is probably too late to be helpful. Recipes for soft dinner rolls are as common as flip-flops in the summer, every common post-WWII cookbook like Betty Crocker, Good Housekeeping, Pillsbury, and the web sites for the yeast companies, will all have recipes for white dinner rolls made with active dry yeast. Prior to that, the homemaker used fresh yeast, and those are the soft white dinner rolls I remember my mother making. If I close my eyes I can still recall the wonderful smell you can only get by using fresh yeast, which is all but unavailable these days. Wal-Mart carried fresh yeast during November and December, and that was the last time I could find it in local stores. It's been at least 15-years since I last bought fresh yeast. The one thing those recipes have in common, and the one tip I can give when making them, is to use all-purpose flour like Gold Medal or Pillsbury, which are National Brands. That was the type of flour used. It wasn't until the advent of the automatic bread machine in the late 1980's that "bread flour" was available for household use. Nearly any recipe that has butter and milk in it will be the one to pick. Avoid using King Arthur All-Purpose or Robin Hood All-Purpose flour because they are higher in protein. If that is the type of flour you have to use, add a little more butter to the recipe (1/2 to 1 T.) to help cut the gluten-development. Hard rolls require flour milled from high-protein hard wheat flour (like bread flour), while soft rolls are best made with flour that is a mix of soft wheat and hard wheat - like National Brands of all-purpose flour. I have a rather interesting bread machine recipe for Soft White Bread that uses 1 cup of white cake mix, which is milled from low-gluten soft wheat, and that is the "secret" ingredient for soft bread. Before going gluten-free, when I wanted to make soft dinner rolls using whole wheat flour (I mill my own flour), I used a 3:2 mix of hard white wheat and soft white wheat (or used a low-gluten flour for the soft wheat like spelt or einkorn). I've been gluten-free for 4-years as of Jan. 1. I now find the smell of bread repulsive. For me, flour was a poison to my body, and for many people it's an addiction. The two isles of the store I try to avoid are the detergent isle due to the onslaught of all the toxic fragrances, and the bread isle. Best of luck on your gluten-free journey. My best advise is to stay clear of processed gluten-free foods due to the high-glycemic flours and starches they are made from. I use coconut flour and nut flour for baking, and have recently added banana flour to the mix, along with milling my own gluten-free flours from a variety of grains/seeds/beans, and I keep rice flour and starches, which are common to all-purpose g-f mixes, to a minimum. When I use rice flour, I soak, sprout, and dry brown rice myself, and mill it into flour to reduce the arsenic found in rice. Nearly all commercial g-f mixes and foods contain cheap, high-glycemic, rice flour. So you are trading one issue - gluten - for another potential issue - blood glucose (and diabetes). I've even been considering a 10-day grain detox to see if I should also eliminate corn from my diet. But I need to get through today, and get the visiting family on their way back to their homes (12-hours away) before the snow storm hits Saturday, before I can even contemplate a detox plan (lol)! -Grainlady