Spaghetti Supreme

A three-day haul to Kansas City this week. Refrigerated beef, the usual. I left Monday morning at four, the sky black, the stars sharp, the highway empty except for the other trucks, the other headlights, the other people who get up before the sun because the freight does not wait. I packed my slow cooker with chicken tortilla soup — chicken broth, canned tomatoes, corn, black beans, shredded rotisserie chicken, cumin, chili powder. It cooked while I drove and by lunch it was ready and I ate it in a truck stop parking lot in Salina, Kansas, with the heater blasting and the radio on and the soup hot and right.

I have been doing this for twenty-one years. Twenty-one years of truck stops and highway miles and meals cooked in a cab. Some days it feels like freedom. Some days it feels like a sentence. Most days it feels like what it is: a job. A good job, an honest job, a job that pays the bills and feeds the kids and keeps the lights on. I do not romanticize trucking the way some people do, the way the movies do. There is nothing romantic about driving an eighteen-wheeler through Kansas in January. There is only the doing of it, and the doing is enough.

Dave held down the fort. Gayle came over Tuesday for dinner — Dave made spaghetti, which is one of three things Dave can cook (spaghetti, scrambled eggs, toast), and the kids ate it without complaint, which tells you more about hunger than about Dave's cooking skills. Josie told me on the phone that Daddy's spaghetti tastes like love and sadness, which is either poetry or a food review, and either way she is not wrong.

I called Gayle from the road Wednesday morning. She said she had oatmeal for breakfast. Oatmeal is better than toast. The trajectory is upward. I am tracking Gayle's breakfast the way a doctor tracks vital signs — the content of the meal tells me the content of the grief, and oatmeal means effort, and effort means she is trying, and trying is the only thing I have ever asked of anyone.

Josie said Dave’s spaghetti tasted like love and sadness, and I have been thinking about that all week from behind the wheel. When I got home Friday evening, I made it myself — properly, the way it deserves — because that girl was not wrong about the love part, and I wanted to tip the balance away from the sadness. This Spaghetti Supreme is the version I make when I need to put something real on the table after days of highway miles and truck stop parking lots: loaded, filling, and worth sitting down for.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

12 oz spaghetti
1 lb ground beef
1/2 lb Italian sausage, casings removed
1 medium onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
1/2 cup water
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp sugar
Salt and black pepper to taste
1/2 cup sliced black olives
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp olive oil

Instructions

Brown the meat. Heat olive oil in a large deep skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add ground beef and Italian sausage, breaking up with a spoon, and cook until browned, about 8 minutes. Drain excess fat.
Build the base. Add the onion and bell pepper to the skillet and cook until softened, about 4 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Simmer the sauce. Stir in crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, water, oregano, basil, red pepper flakes, and sugar. Season with salt and pepper. Reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens.
Cook the pasta. While the sauce simmers, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook spaghetti according to package directions until al dente. Drain and set aside.
Finish the sauce. Stir sliced black olives into the sauce and taste for seasoning. Adjust salt, pepper, or red pepper flakes as needed.
Serve. Plate the spaghetti and ladle the meat sauce generously over the top. Finish with shredded mozzarella and a shower of Parmesan. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Spaghetti Supreme — The Meal That Tastes Like Love and Sadness