Wedded Bliss

Yesterday was our two-year anniversary. If you're playing along at home, the traditional gift for the second year is cotton. Perfect, since we needed new sheets. I can't guess how old our current sheet sets are. One fitted sheet has an ever-growing hole, while the other set is a those t-shirt sheets which cause me to sweat like Heidi Fleiss in a synagogue.

When we went to buy the sheets at Target (5% savings with our Target card!), we found a comforter we both liked--no small feat in itself--on sale. I wasn't sure and asked Husband, "Do you want to be stuck with this in our bedroom every day for five years?" He looked at me like I was a crazy person and replied, "It's $22. For that price, we can get something new in a couple years and put it in a garage sale if we get tired of it."

Indulge in a modest splurge. Of course, he was right. It's a pretty comforter and a pleasant change to see every day. And talk about an inexpensive anniversary gift! But there is a part of me that feels a little guilty--mostly because I feel like we indulge too many modest splurges. Husband and I are wired differently when it comes to this concept. To him, everything is "only $x," whereas I always think "if you didn't spend that $x a week you'd have $x*52 after a year." It's a delicate balance between being a killjoy and ending up with less money than you started the month with. And I don't always make the right decision--I'm still not 100% convinced that we made the right decision this time, but I will take comfort in my nice new comforter. Besides the countdown in on to cinch up my belt starting in October.

I also made spaghetti sauce to freeze yesterday. It could've been almost free sauce since my folks have been heaping tomatoes from their garden on me since mid-summer. I had stacks of tomatoes from the Hen House Growers Alliance CSA and from my parents' visit this weekend. The tomatoes from the CSA (They were hydroponic hot house tomatoes. You know the kind that seem really good in the spring but are poor imitations after a summer's worth of vine-ripened goodness. My brother calls these cardboard tomatoes.) cost about $4.00 so I ended up with a Ragu sized jar of tomato sauce that cost a little over $4. Not at all cheap when you compare it to the the sale price of a jar of Ragu. But it is worth it knowing that I didn't end up composting $4 worth of tomatoes that I would have left until all the *good* tomatoes were gone and the cardboard tomatoes went rotten on the counter. Plus it was easy and made the house smell pretty darn good for the evening.

Spaghetti Sauce
A bunch of tomatoes: 5-6 big cardboard tomatoes and 4-5 small garden tomatoes
4-5 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
Olive oil
Italian herbs, salt, pepper, onion powder

Cook the garlic in the oil. Peel the tomatoes and add them and the seasoning. Cook until the tomatoes break down and are mushy. This filled up a Ragu jar that I saved and washed out. I put in in the refrigerator overnight and pureed it in the blender the next evening. (I waited mostly because the blender was getting clean in the running dishwasher.) Then I put it back in the jar and put it in the freezer.