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Morning, Gentle Readers! Deirdre here, since Miles said I could have the lead-off this morning if I filled in that chapter in the book we are supposed to release tomorrow for the big kick-off to the Fall Season and another triumph of Chairman Willies Socotra House publishing empire. That makes this installment the next to the one before- the “penultimate” pasta pitch!<\/p>\n
I am skeptical as well about that.<\/p>\n
We didn’t realize how this project was going to come to pass. Our earlier books had been focused on the people the Chairman interacted with across a bifurcated career in the Navy, Capitol Hill and the depths of the Intelligence Community. The 250th threw that approach into a cocked hat, which is one of the symbols that have been flying around with feathers and pipes and drums all summer.<\/p>\n
You could attempt to pile them all atop one another- in addition to the usual summer fandangoes of beaches and baseball, there was the FIFA World Cup and the high-pitched roar of the Grand Prix and the slightly lower but more purposeful one about the election they tell us is only 63 days away.<\/p>\n
The part about the book- “Cooking With Oil”- is a description of how our team manages to produce a morning and afternoon product that runs on the Socotra website and is used for product placement elsewhere. Like today, when Congress comes back from a vacation we are not sure they earned and the Arlington County kids do their fifteen-minute return to schools.<\/p>\n
So, here goes: Store-bought tomato sauce refers to commercially prepared, shelf-stable or refrigerated sauces derived primarily from tomatoes, often blended with herbs, spices, oil, acid (e.g., vinegar or citric acid), and preservatives.<\/p>\n
I tried to point out to Miles that pasta sauce is something different since it typically contains added cheese, meat, or starches as a foundational base used in soups, stews, shakshuka, grain bowls, and slow-cooked legumes. I have chapters on air frying and slow cooking, so it seems to me that a chapter or two may require a little more work. But we will see what we can get accomplished today. In the meantime, pull up a stool. I have some vegetables that need some chopping!<\/p>\n
Oh, and that nice comparison of the 14 sauces I include in the once-a-month run to Costco?<\/p>\n
‘Michaels of Brooklyn’ is my favorite of the ones I could assemble for the tomato chapter, but I have found the the simple act of adding a few fried veggies, some Italian seasonings, paprika and hot sauce can make even the low-budget sauces work just fine. Or just mix ’em together!<\/p>\n
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Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra
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Morning, Gentle Readers! Deirdre here, since Miles said I could have the lead-off this morning if I filled in that chapter in the book we are supposed to release tomorrow for the big kick-off to the Fall Season and another triumph of Chairman Willies Socotra House publishing empire. That makes this installment the next to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dierdre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34190,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34186\/revisions\/34190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}