Pretty Little Apron

freshley cracked black pepper

Old World Spaghetti and Meat Sauce

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This Old World Spaghetti and Meat Sauce recipe is truly a classic! It combines the best of both worlds, an oil based pasta sauce and a tomato based pasta sauce. This is also a really quick and easy way to make a homemade sauce, without spending hours letting it simmer and cooking down a bunch of vegetables. This is a great “beginner” homemade sauce, so if you haven’t made your own sauce in the past, don’t worry… you’ve got this!


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The really unique thing about this sauce is it is actually made in a food processor instead of on the stove. Of course the meat portion of this sauce is cooked on the stove but the sauce itself is just a whole lot of flavor blended together and combined with the cooked beef and onions. After you combine the meat and sauce, just toss in pasta and top with fresh asiago cheese (or parmesan) and that is it! It doesn’t stop there people… this pasta is also amazing cold! I was actually inspired to create this after I created a cold pasta salad using the same flavor combination a few weeks ago. Not only is this a great dinner, you can throw it in your lunch the next day and you have an amazing pasta that would be great over a bed of spinach or by itself.

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Homemade Ranch Dressing-mayo free

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We have all seen recipes claiming to be “the best ever”. I hesitate to call any recipe that because it is a little bit gimmicky. I’m sure at least one of those “best ever” recipes really wasn’t! However, if I were to start coining that term, this would be the recipe I’d start with. It truly is like no other ranch you’ve had. It is better… a lot better!


If you’ve been going the Hidden Valley route, fear not… you’ll never want to eat that crap again after tasting real ranch dressing. Real ranch dressing that doesn’t contain genetically modified soybean oil or any of it’s friends, like EDTA or MSG. The truth is, those ingredients don’t have to be in any dressing, including ranch. So instead of hitting up the middle of the grocery store just grab yourself a container of sour cream and a few spices and you will be all set to make your own ranch dressing.

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This recipe is going to give you a dry mix of ranch dressing spices. All you need to do is simply add the spices to 1/4 cup of sour cream, and 1/4 of a cup of milk and stir. When you want fresh dressing, no need to measure all the spices out again. Just grab your pre-mixed ranch spices and add them to the sour cream and milk. You’ll have enough for that day, and maybe one or two more servings depending on how much you love ranch!

You may be wondering, where’s the mayo? Well mayo is kind of the same thing as bottled ranch dressing. It also contains soybean oil, preservatives, and other stuff that doesn’t need to be there. That is why I choose not to use mayo in my household at all. I’ve simply substituted sour cream instead of using mayo because sour cream doesn’t contain any random ingredients or additives. The simpler the better!

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I just knew everyone was dying to know what my fingernails look like. I asked my husband to be the hand model but his hands just aren’t as pretty as mine (he is a construction worker). Well, here mine are in all of their unpainted and un-manicured glory. This is what life looks like with 3 kids people. No time for fingernail painting! Maybe someday… 🙂