Yellow label tea, only it's red

 

What the L?

This morning I opened up a new box of Lipton tea, only to be confronted by tea bags that now sport a white L reversed on a red background. It's actually fairly nice looking, and I give them no notes about typography choice. But really, why?

This move was apparently made nearly a year ago, and I've certainly bought the multi-sleeve pack of tea at least once in that time but this is the first time we've encountered it, which probably says something about local store stocking....

At the time it was announced, Food Business News reported that the rebrand was a move to “refresh the image of the brand and keep relevant with consumers.” I'm sure there were focus groups involved that told them so. 

Like most repackaging moves companies make, I fail to see how this will make them more relevant with consumers. (Oh, my tea has a snazzy L on it so I feel more hip while drinking it??) At least they didn't make themselves unrecognizable on the shelves, as many brands do when they tread down that path. But the part that puzzles me in this case is the box still retains its trademarked (literally) Yellow Label black tea verbiage when the label side that's most visible is in fact, no longer yellow. (If you flip it over, there is a residual yellow label of a sort.) It's a choice, but one that's kind of a head-scratcher.

The box notes that Lipton Yellow Label tea is iconic. I would concur. It's the basic tea many of us grew up with, and while I certainly have developed near addition levels of devotion to some Harney's products, Lipton still wins points for what it is: a reliable, basic black tea that's comparatively value priced as tea aisle offerings go. 

But when I googled to learn more about this brand shift, it hit me why they went with the red. Much better favicon than that yellow:

Beans and greens soups, from fancy to basic

 

OK, I'm not sure which ones count as fancy. Maybe the ones with fried halloumi cheese crumbles or frizzled onions, which seemed like potential nice touches. I tried three soups recently that fall into the beans and greens genre, and they really weren't repetitive. 

As a bonus at the end, a way to assemble your own beans and greens soup recipe based on a sort of Garanimals version of what's in your refrigerator and pantry at the moment.

Autumn vegetable soup

From dietitian Ellie Krieger in the Fine Cooking Oct./Nov. 2009 issue. Serves 8-ish as a starter. She specifies lower-salt versions of everything when possible.

Note: Depending on what sort of soup pots you've got on hand, you might not need to deploy your biggest one to house this recipe, but quite possibly your second largest. Err on the large side.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
3 medium carrots, peeled and chopped small
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups ½-inch cubes of peeled butternut squash
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of cayenne powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 quart chicken broth
1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes
4 sprigs fresh thyme
2 cups thinly sliced kale
1 cup cooked chickpeas

Method

Heat oil a large soup pot over medium heat. Cook onion and carrots until beginning to soften. Add garlic and cook for another minute. Add squash, allspice, cayenne and salt and stir to combine. Add broth, tomatoes and thyme. Cover and bring to a simmer, cooking for 10 minutes. Add kale and chickpeas and cook, covered, for another 10-20 minutes until squash is tender. Discard thyme leaves.

Rating: Nice, and a fairly fast fix if you prechop all the veggies like I did. Pretty pantry friendly, too. A perfectly viable entry into the beans/greens soup category.

Beans and greens soup with halloumi cheese crumbles

From the Winter 2026 issue of Bon Appetit by Rebecca Firkser. Makes either 4 very hearty main dish servings or 8 side dish servings.

Ingredients

1 large bunch Swiss chard
6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
6 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
¼ cup double-concentrate tomato paste (the stuff that they sell in a tube)
3 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons hot smoked Spanish paprika
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 15-ounce cans chickpeas or white beans
4 cups broth
1 package halloumi cheese
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon lemon zest

Method

Remove ribs and stems from Swiss chard. Chop the ribs and stems into small pieces. Coarsely chop chard leaves and set aside. (They get added at different stages.)

In a large deep pot, heat 5 tablespoons of the olive until garlic is fragrant. Add chopped chard stems and leaves and cook until nearly tender. Add tomato paste, butter, paprika, red pepper flakes and some salt. Cook a minute and then add beans, smooshing them up a bit as you go. Then add chicken broth, bring to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, pat halloumi dry and break into large crumbles. The recipe recommends using the coarsest grater grind to accomplish this. 

In a skillet, heat remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Add cheese crumbles and cook in a single layer over medium high heat until golden brown. Stir in lemon zest and season with pepper. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add chard leaves to soup and cook for 5 minutes until wilted. Adjust soup seasoning as needed. Serve soup in bowls with cheese crumbles. (If you're making the main soup ahead, make the cheese crumbles shortly before you're serving it. If you've got leftover soup/crumbles, I'd suggest storing them separately in the frig.)

Rating: I liked the smoked paprika flavor, which added a lot of depth to the broth, and it was very filling, as it should be given the plethora of beans in it. I thought the halloumi crumbles brought some additional interest to the soup. Dave liked it without notes. For some reason even though I usually like Swiss chard, I found myself really noticing the chard flavor and not in the best way, so if I make it again, I might try it with kale or spinach. 

Dilly bean stew with cabbage and frizzled onions

Adapted from the Better Homes & Gardens January/February 2026 issue. The original recipe comes from "Something From Nothing" by Alison Roman. Serves 4.

Ingredients
2+ tablespoons butter, divided
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 15-ounce cans white beans (I used Great Northerns)
4 cups broth
2 cups coarsely chopped green cabbage
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 cup fresh dill, chopped, divided
Sour cream for garnish

Method

Heat 2 tablespoons of butter and olive oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add onions, coarse salt and some pepper, and cook until the onion gets browned and crispy, a state the recipe refers to as frizzled. You'll need to restrain yourself from the natural temptation to stir them often, since you want them to have more crisp and less soft caramelized onion texture. In other words, the kind of onions you end up when you get distracted while cooking. 

I personally found it hard to distract myself on purpose, but a good way to kill time is to smush up the beans a bit with a fork so some of them are broken up to add creaminess but you've still got plenty of whole beans. I find it easier to do this before adding them to a hot pot.

When onions have frizzled, remove a quarter of them from the pan to a small bowl and set aside to use as garnish later.

Add some of the broth to the pan to deglaze it and then add beans and remaining broth. Bring to a simmer and cook for 15 or 20 minutes to let flavors blend. Leave pan uncovered so it cooks down a bit. Add cabbage and vinegar and cook for another 15 minutes. Remove from heat and add half of the dill. Season with more salt, pepper and vinegar as needed. 

Serve garnished with remaining dill, frizzled onions, sour cream and a bit of softened butter (or a drizzle of olive oil) as desired.

Rating: It may not be the lookiest color-wise, but it's got nice flavor. The only green left visible after that pale green cabbage is cooked is the dill, which does double duty for flavor and color. The smushed beans lends creaminess. All around a decent soup for a day where the incipient hints of spring green up outside have been countered by a light glazing of ice and snow.

What's in the house? Make it into a soup following a simple formula.

Beans and greens soup basic formula

It's great to try new recipes to expand your repertoire, but don't let the perfect ever been the enemy of perfectly fine. Sometimes you're not going to have some of the ingredients called for on hand but you still want soup. That's when you take one from Category A, Category B, etc., until you've assembled a soup. This is one of the more forgiving soup formulas:

Column A, meat, pick one, unless you're opting for meatless:

1 pound ground pork breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, ground chorizo or ground beef
8 ounces chopped sausages, like kielbasa, chorizo, etc.
4 ounces chopped pancetta

Column B, beans:

About 2 cups cooked beans, either Great Northern, cannellini, navy, kidney, black, garbanzo, etc. Include the cooking liquid if you cooked them yourself, or drain and rinse them if canned and add a ½ cup water to make up the difference

Column C, greens:

2 cups of chopped kale, collard greens, Swiss chard, beet greens, arugula or spinach (if using baby spinach leaves, you can leave them whole)

Column D, vegetables:

Generally I'll make sure to have at least these basic three to start:

1 medium onion, chopped small
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 celery stalks, diced

These next are all optional, and you wouldn't probably toss all of these in, but it's nice to have one or two additional veggies according to what you have on hand:

3 or more garlic cloves, diced
Fennel bulb/stalks, chopped small
Swiss chard stems, chopped small
1 bell pepper, chopped small (red for color is nice)
2 cups cubed butternut squash
1 medium zucchini, chopped

Column E, tomatoes

Pick one from which ever one of these you have on hand. If you opt for paste, add a cup of water to compensate for the lack of liquid:

1 14.5-ounce can chopped tomatoes and their liquid (or break them up if they're whole)
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
4 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons double-concentrate tomato paste

Column F, broth
4-6 cups broth. The amount you need is going to vary based on how much stuff you threw into the pot, but figure on at least a quart. And yes, in a pinch you can make up some of the difference with water since the veggies will help make it more broth-like.

Column G, aromatics

OK, this is where you can really tailor a soup to your taste and to a season. If you're using a highly spiced meat, keep that in mind before going hog wild on either spices or salt, but if you're avoiding meat, then this is where you'll want to put in some care to amp up the flavor.

Herbs and spices: If you're feeling in a chili-ish mood, add chili powder and ground cumin to a dish with black or red beans. Allspice and cloves add a rich touch to a veggie soup. If you want an herb base, a bay leaf is a good start, or sage leaves, basil, oregano, etc. Fresh is dandy, and you can just add whole stalks and fish them out before serving, or you can use dried if that's what's available. 

The condiment shelf: Chili crisp, black bean paste, soy sauce or tamari, fish sauce, gochujang. Basically a tablespoon or so of one of those would be a good place to start and then taste-test from there. Just remember, this is going to intensify in flavor as it cooks.

The cheese drawer: The end hunks of hard cheese like Parmesan are a big flavor booster, particularly if you aren't using meat.

Method

1. If you're using meat, in a large deep-sided pot, cook your meat of choice until it's no longer pink if ground meat, or saute sliced meat until browned on both sides. You might need to add oil for lean meat. Remove from pan and drain on paper towels; you'll add those back in later.

2. In the same pan, cook the onion, carrots and celery over medium heat until softened. If you didn't use meat or if it was quite lean, you'll need to add a tablespoon or so of olive oil to the pan. If you're using chopped fennel or Swiss chard stems, add those to the onion mixture to cook at the same time.

3. Once the core vegetables have softened, add remaining vegetables of choice like garlic, bell pepper, squash, etc. Cook for another 5 minutes. 

4. Add beans, their cooking liquid or equivalent and whatever form of tomato you're using. Add broth as needed, keeping in mind you'll be adding the meat back in later along with some greens, so be generous. Add any aromatics. Cook for 20 minutes.

5. Return meat to the pot. If you're using kale as your green, add that at the same time and cook for 10 to 15 minutes more or until kale is tender. If you're using softer greens, cook the mixture after adding meat for 10 minutes and then add the greens for another 5 minutes. Adjust seasoning as needed with salt and pepper.

Like many soups, the flavor will deepen if made ahead and reheated.

Breakfast egg sandwiches, only for lunch

 

In between the sky is falling posts and cat videos, my Instagram feed quickly seemed to default to offering me all sorts of variations on what people refer to as breakfast sandwiches. Something that you can prep a bunch of for the week and quickly zap in the microwave on the way out the door or at the office. 

Since I've never been a big breakfast eater except on Sundays when we treat it as more like a brunch, I never really saw the point. But the same premise definitely applies to a fast lunch fix, and I find I'm still in need of those, so I decided to test drive some of the more promising recipes out there from Instagram-land and beyond.

Freezer egg sandwiches

From Better Homes & Gardens, January 2020 issue

Ingredients

8 eggs, beaten
⅓ cup milk
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground pepper
6 English muffins, toasted
6 slices cooked bacon
6 slices Cheddar cheese
Fresh spinach leaves, optional

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13- by 9-inch pan with tin foil. Spray with cooking spray. Combine eggs, milk, herbs, mustard and salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Pour into prepared pan and bake until set, 8 to 12 minutes. Slice into six pieces, then each piece in half. Stack two slices on one half of an English muffin, then top each with a slice of bacon and a slice of cheese. (If using spinach, you can tuck that in on top of the cheese before topping with remaining muffin half once you're ready to reheat them.) Bake until cheese melts.

To assemble ahead and reheat, wrap prepared sandwiches in plastic wrap after assembling them and before melting the cheese. Ostensibly you can freeze them, then remove the plastic wrap and reheat them in a paper towel in the microwave for a minute or two. 

Rating: Tasty. The herbs and mustard give the eggs some character. It's a bit like bacon cheeseburger topping meets egg sandwich. As for their instructions about reheating, well, I'm not a microwave fan in this case because of what it does to bread products, so I opt for reheating in a 350-degree oven until the cheese melts and sandwich is warmed through. I couldn't bring myself to try it from a frozen state, but I'm not imagining that being the work of a moment. It still counts as tasty fast food, at any rate.

Tomato, feta egg sandwiches

This is kind of like a bit of a caprese version of an egg sandwich, or at least one that incorporates flavors of peak summer with pesto and tomatoes. Adapted from the Instagram post of ellena_fit; go there if you want a video how-to. She cut her frittata into 4 pieces that were a bit deeper to make 4 sandwiches, but given my pan dimensions (8-by-10) it made sense to cut them into 6 because otherwise it would have hung over the edge quite a bit.

Ingredients
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 teaspoon olive oil
8 eggs
A generous ½ cup of cottage cheese
2 tablespoons torn fresh basil leaves or 1 tablespoon oregano leaves
½ salt, plus more for sprinkling
½ cup crumbled feta
6 English muffins, split and toasted
6 slices of mozzarella
Pesto for spreading 

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place tomatoes in a mid-size baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with some salt. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until smooshable. Remove from oven. I chose to smoosh a few of the tomatoes and leave the rest whole.

Combine eggs, cottage cheese, herbs, ½ salt and a generous grind of pepper. Pour over tomatoes in pan. Sprinkle top with feta. Bake for 20 minutes until set. Let cool slightly.

Cut egg bake into 6 pieces. Spread toasted English muffins with pesto. Top muffin bottoms with a square of egg bake, a slice of mozzarella and the English muffin tops. Bake at 350 until cheese is melted and sandwich is heated through.

I opted to store the egg bake separately after serving us sandwiches for lunch because I was concerned that the amount of liquid in the pesto and tomatoes might result in a somewhat soggy sandwich if stored assembled, but I suppose that depends on the nature of your pesto.

Rating: The tomatoes and feta help bring more to the egg party, and pesto pairs nicely with the tomatoes. This sandwich had surprisingly good structural integrity, which can be an issue with this type of sandwich. With prebaked, precut egg bake squares it's no more trouble to make than any sandwich for lunch and it's another way to get a decent hot sandwich into the rotation on a cold day along with the soup du jour or semaine.

Bacon, egg and cheese bagels

Also from ellena_fit on Instagram.

Ingredients
4 bagels (the everything bagels worked well here)
8 eggs
½ cup cottage cheese
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
4 slices of cooked bacon, chopped
½ salt
4 slices smoked gouda or cheddar cheese
Sriracha mayo for spreading, or see Cane's dipping sauce recipe below

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8-by-8 pan. Combine eggs, cottage cheese, chives, salt and a generous sprinkle of pepper in a bowl. Stir in bacon. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Cool slightly. Cut into 4 squares. Spread bagels with mayo or dip. Top each with a quarter of the egg bake and a slice of cheese. Return to oven and cook about 5 minutes until cheese melts.

Rating: This was my favorite one so far. The everything bagels really brought a little something to the party, as did that dip. (Oh, that dip. It should probably be illegal.) The bacon comes through and the smoked gouda is a nice touch. 

Cane's sauce

From Diane Morrisey's Instagram post, her version of a dipping sauce from the Raising Cane restaurant. The flavor deepens a bit if you refrigerate it for a time instead of trying to use it right away. She paired hers with homemade fish sticks, which seems like another really yummy usage, and she includes a recipe at that link.

1 cup mayonnaise
¼ cup ketchup
½ teaspoon cayenne powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
2 teaspoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

Combine all sauce ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Definitely a little kick to it, but not like get-me-water hot or anything.  The sauce is a definite keeper.

Did I need to try yet another version? Possibly not, but I did it anyway:

Spicy maple breakfast sandwiches 

Adapted from "good mood food” from Kale Me Maybe’s Carina Wolff. This one drew my interest because of the homemade sausage and I liked the idea of cutting out circles of egg bake to match the English muffin size. More on that later.

Ingredients

2 tablespoon olive oil, divided
2 pounds ground pork
⅓ cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt, divided
1 tablespoon Calabrian chili
10 eggs
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 small onion, diced
⅓ cup milk
2 cups baby spinach leaves
10 English muffins, toasted
10 slices cheese of choice, I found pepper jack works well here

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9-by-13 pan with parchment paper.

Heat olive oil in a large nonstick skillet. Combine pork, maple syrup, garlic powder, ¼ salt and Calabrian chili in a bowl. Form into 10 patties. Cook in oil until cooked through, flipping half way through. Remove from pan and set aside on paper towels.

If needed, add additional 1 tablespoon olive oil to the skillet; depending on the fat content of your meat you might have plenty in the pan. Cook onion and bell pepper and until softened. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Combine eggs, milk and remaining salt in a bowl. Stir in sauteed vegetables and spinach. Pour into pan and bake 20-25 minutes or until set. 

Cut egg bake into 10 pieces. Place egg bake on an English muffin. Top with a sausage and a slice of cheese and English muffin top. Bake until cheese melts. Alternatively, you can assemble them and then either bake or microwave them later. I did resort to the microwave once with these, because, well, I needed to clean my oven after some of the egg bake fell off a sandwich onto the oven floor. A minute on high wrapped in a paper towel will heat them through and melt the cheese, providing you don't mind rubbery cheese. 

Rating: The sausages definitely bring a lot to the party and have some merit on their own. That said, if you want to simplify the prep, if you've got a good breakfast sausage brand you like, you could cook that up instead. The frittata portion is fine, and adding the spinach to the bake itself is a good call, but it's really that sausage patty doing the work. The original recipe called for ground turkey, but I wound up with pork on hand instead, so it's possible that affected the patty size. As it was, those 10 patties were pretty much small breakfast sausage size, so I didn't see the point of having equally small rounds of egg bake when the muffins were significantly bigger diameter, so I skipped that bit. I tried this once following the egg bake instructions and wound up with nearly double the amount of egg bake to sausage ratio, so I took another whack at it to rationalize for my use case.

Takeaways

So am I enamored with the make-ahead breakfast sandwich genre? Well, not entirely. The part where I had some prepped sandwich portions to assemble quickly certainly had merit. After trying the microwave approach I definitely did not appreciate what it does to cheese, so I prefer the oven, but I get that if you were transporting them to an office setting they're better than nothing. 

The key: Something that makes them tasty, and generally that something is going to come in the form of meat. The one vegetarian option I tried compensated by bringing in more flavor to the egg bake portion, which helped, but the meat was definitely doing the heavy flavor lifting in these sandwiches. Everything-seasoned bagels are also a plus, and there's no reason to settle for bland cheese. 

That said, as much as I adore advance meal prep as a practice, it can't really hold a candle to my preferred breakfast sandwich of softly scrambled eggs piled on a brioche bun, topped with a slice of cooked bacon and a slice of smoked gouda cheese melted in the oven. Because good things often do reward spending just a bit more time, when you have it. 

Fixing the leftovers: What to do when a soup recipe doesn't cut it

It started life as pumpkin Parmesan soup.

Years ago I described my cooking style as relentless. I routinely tried more than 200 new recipes a year, sometimes five of them in a single meal (my definition of an extravaganza). Then I  drifted away from that into just sort of cooking, because when you've tried a few thousand recipes you have more or less figured out what works together and find yourself riffing on what's available that you feel like cooking. Plus I got super busy during the pandemic and some how never got back any semblance of work-life balance and a dependable, uninterrupted meal time.

Now I would describe my cooking style as diligent and strategic. My goal is more to consistently have something tasty to eat for every meal rather than trying to hit any specific target, and preferably to pull that off without burning myself out so I no longer think it's any fun to cook. The key to that is pacing, and leftovers play a crucial role.

Leftovers are a fantastic resource, providing you plan for them so you don't wind up eating the same thing multiple days in a row. That's where the freezer is your friend, and again, having a menu that schedules when you'll pull those out to thaw and recombine in new pairings. Unless I have company, I try to alternate major cooking days with days where I can coast on a previous day's labor for at least some portion of a meal.

So the Chicken Marbella leftovers and their wondrous sauce get paired with a new pan of baked brown and wild rice. The rice leftovers come out a few days later to pair with a roasted pork tenderloin and a piquant salad. The leftovers from a lunch of quiche and cream of spinach soup go into the freezer to each come out later to pair with something else. The dreamy caramelized onion dip leftover from entertaining gets tossed with pasta and some pancetta.

This is all dandy until you run into a dud. If you were disappointed in a recipe upon first serving it, aside from some soups, dressings and dips where flavors intensify with time, your enjoyment isn't likely to improve with reheating another day. 

I tried a recipe for Parmesan pumpkin soup from the "5 in 10 Cookbook," which features the gimmick of things you can make in 10 minutes with 5 ingredients. I thought the combo of a can of pumpkin puree, milk, broth, nutmeg and Parmesan cheese had some promise, and it was certainly fast. But it was simultaneously thin and stringy (from the cheese). The flavor was OK, but it seemed watered down, which might seem an odd thing to say about something that you eat with a spoon, but it just seemed to lack all body. 

I wasn't looking forward to another helping of that awaiting me. I contemplated augmenting it with a super thin white sauce, but that seemed like more effort than this slight recipe deserved. Then I realized its runniness could be my friend: I brought the leftovers to a boil and added a couple cups of radiatore pasta. There was just enough liquid to cook the pasta and wind up with a creamy sauce. So it went from runny soup to roni soup, and now I had a new entree for the leftover menu. 

It ended up life as a pasta sauce.

Bolognese Boursin soup

Converting soups to pasta can also work in reverse. I had leftover black bean Bolognese sauce on hand when I saw Amy Sheppard's Instagram post on making Bolognese sauce into soup. I had two cups of sauce, added a quart of broth, a round of Boursin and a handful of chopped parsley and it yielded a very nice, super fast soup. Definitely would repeat.

It started as pleasant pasta sauce and ended up as really nice soup. 

Along those same lines, the Star Tribune Taste section recently published a New York Times piece on three soups that repurpose the components of other dishes, including hummus, three-bean soup and pesto pasta. All look plausible.

Three newish tech features I really wish had happened sooner

Closing one of the tabs in split view is as simple as hitting the X next to it in the top tab window.

One of the tradeoffs of leaving work is no longer having a captive audience to share my delight in new tech features that crop up. Admittedly, I just as often had to share updates about the status of the latest bug, but I also got to spread good news when one of our software providers implemented a feature that could make our work lives better. Hence the reason you're seeing me dispense tech advice into the ether, because I just have to share it somewhere. 

Chrome's new split screen feature

Why, oh why, couldn't this feature have existed while I was working? So many programs I worked with were web-based, and having a super slick way to have two browser windows open side by side without any need to manually manipulate the window widths would have been a total game-changer. Just hold down the shift key before clicking on the second tab you want to add to a split view and then right-click to pick "Add to new split view." If you right-click on one of the combined tabs again under "arrange split view" you'll see options to rearrange the order of the tabs, close one of the open tabs or just restore them to separate tabs. (Or you can right-click on any tab to select that feature and then navigate to add a different tab in split view.) It may not have been available when I could have made the best use of it, but I've still made great use of this new capability, starting with having my Christmas shopping Google spreadsheet open next to a website for shopping. You can also drag and drop a window into a split view, which I learned from this post.

Windows 11 glyphs palette

Another feature I totally would have killed for at work, but one that's still super handy for things like inserting fractions in a blog post. I've used the Windows-V clipboard history feature to pin the fractions, but now can use Windows-V to get at an extensive Symbols panel and history as well as clipboard history, and it remembers your most recently inserted, so I'm finding that just as handy as the clipboard history since I don't need to cull the history to keep the fractions at the top.

Split view in Slack

Also just too late for most of my work life: Slack's new split view. It lets you see two conversations, two channels or two canvases side by side. Just click on a channel (or DM or canvas), Control-click on another channel and then right click on the first channel top pick open in split view. For canvases and lists, the option is under the three-dot menu at the upper right.

Windows+Shift+Minus for an em dash

This one isn't super new, apparently, but it was new to me when I ran across it. This was a development in keyboard shortcuts that I missed when it first happened, probably because I wasn't on Windows 11 at the time. Sure, some people think the em dash is like the mark of the AI devil, but you won't convince the style committee of that one. I worked in a program that had stomped all over any other existing em dash shortcut except for the Alt 0151, so that would have been super helpful. 

Three bean soups

As in three soups that have beans in them, not three-bean soup, which is its own thing. When you think of bean soup, if you're like me, the first thing that comes to mind is navy bean with ham or bacon. But given the variety of beans out there, there's a wide variation of bean soup recipes. In some cases they provide the solid heft, in others, pureed creaminess. Beans' basic blandness lends itself to be a carrier for whatever flavor profile you choose to apply.

The fact that these three recipes are all from Cooking Light is no coincidence. I'm finally starting to slowly go through old cooking magazines to clip likely suspects and recycle the rest. It was one of those tasks that fell into the category of oh, that seems like a good job to deal with when I'm retired. It didn't particularly strike me as odd to retain what are essentially monthly cookbooks, but if casual acquaintances came to the house, they'd invariably comment on the shelves of magazines lining the sunroom. Regular friends don't bat an eye at this apparent aberration, just file that under one of my basic personality quirks.

It's been an interesting exercise going through the back issues. Back then I was going through each issue and writing out on a sheet of scratch paper which recipes I wanted to try from each issue, noting the page number and which sort of meal they were suited for: weeknight supper, weekend lunch, etc. I'd put checkmarks and comments by any I tried and an arrow in front of ones I really wanted to try first. Comparing what I clipped out now to what I wanted to try then shows that tastes change. Recipes I hadn't even marked to try are now in my clipping pile, while some former must-tries didn't move the needle.

This first soup makes me feel vindicated in hanging on to what for others are ephemeral periodicals. 

Creamy truffle-scented white bean soup

From Cooking Light, sometime in the aughts.
Note: This recipe called for bottled minced roasted garlic. That might be a thing still and I just haven't looked for it. At any rate, I opted for roasted garlic from the grocery store deli. I also included a bit of the cooking liquid with the beans, since I used beans I'd cooked and stored in the freezer instead of canned. The recipe also calls for truffle oil, which is dandy, but feel free to try whatever flavored oil you want. My favorite with this is actually a lemon-infused oil.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced roasted garlic
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
1½ teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary leaves
2 cups broth
2 (19-ounce) cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained (see note)
1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon truffle oil or other flavored oil

Method

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and cook until tender. Add garlic, pepper and rosemary and cook until fragrant. Add broth and beans. Bring to a simmer and cook 20 minutes. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Stir in 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Puree soup. Check seasoning, adding more lemon juice if desired. Serve each of the 4 servings topped with a ¼ teaspoon of truffle oil for each serving.

Rating: Quite nice. Worth making even if you don't have any flavored oils, because the roasted garlic and rosemary do quite a nice job on their own, flavorwise. Decent texture, and really a nice fast fix. While the flavor may deepen a bit if made ahead, it's plenty tasty right away, so it's one you can whip up quickly anytime you have roasted garlic. Well, assuming you have a rosemary bush or the equivalent. Definitely going in the Keeper pile.

Black bean soup

From Cooking Light

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
½ cup diced celery
½ cup diced onion
¼ diced peppers (I used red and yellow since that's what I had)
3 tablespoons chopped carrot
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1½ teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2 cups broth
1 cup water
3 cans (15-ounce) black beans, rinsed and drained
Sliced green onions for garnish

Method

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add celery, onion, bell pepper and carrots. Cook until tender. Add garlic, cumin, oregano, chili powder and pepper. Cook 3 minutes. Add broth, water and beans. Cook 20 minutes. Cool slightly and puree. Serve garnished with green onions.

Rating: Sludgy texture, but that's not entirely a bad thing in winter, and it delivers your basic chili spices. Improves with reheating, so it's one to make ahead for best flavor.

Leek and lima bean soup with bacon

From Cooking Light, June 2008 issue. Makes 8 skimpy servings.

Ingredients

3 bacon slices
2 cups chopped leeks, white and light-green parts only
4 cups lima beans, fresh or thawed if frozen
4 cups broth
1 cup water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ cup chopped green onions for garnish
¼ cup sour cream for garnish

Method

Cook bacon in a large, deep-sided pot until crisp. Remove from pan, drain and chop when cool.

In bacon drippings, cook leeks until tender over medium heat. Add beans, broth and water. Bring to a simmer and cook about 15 minutes. Cool mixture slightly and puree in a food processor or blender. Return to pan and season with lemon juice, salt and pepper. Serve garnished with chopped bacon, a tablespoon of sour cream and some green onions.

Rating: As much as I ordinarily like fresh lemon in pretty much anything, it strikes a really off note in this recipe, so if I ever make it again, I'm going to skip that. The bacon is doing all the flavor work here, and it comes in more fully upon reheating, so I'd suggest making it ahead for better flavor. Because bacon. But overall, this one falls into the category of worth trying, better than canned, but not really worth repeating when the world is filled with tastier soup recipes.

3 slaws that slay

Curtido should preferably be made at least a few hours ahead and keeps for 2 weeks.

Sometimes I feel the need for a different kind of coleslaw. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a well-executed standard mayo-based slaw dressing, but sometimes I want the slaw to do a bit more work as part of an overall menu, delivering both a good solid crunch factor and some added what's-it in a way that the more mild-mannered versions don't. 

While coleslaw might most often be thought of as a summer cookout side dish, I think it really shines the most in late winter, when we haven't seen a truly decent green salad for months. Then cabbage, kale and other sturdy carriers for dressing fill that void, with the added bonus that cabbage is open to a lot of different flavor combinations. Here are three to try:

Curtido

Adapted from Food & Wine May 2023 issue. The recipe is credited to Evelyn Garcia of Jūn in Houston. This slaw was a topping for pupusas, and would work in other sandwich/wrap usages. I just served it as a side with a sturdy soup.

Ingredients

4 cups thinly sliced green cabbage
½ cup thinly sliced red onion
¼ cup shredded carrot
1 medium jalapeño chile, sliced (or I used 1 tablespoon sliced pickled jalapeños)

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh cilantro stems, plus leaves for garnish
1 cup white vinegar
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon fine sea salt

Method

Toss together cabbage, onion, carrot and jalapeño in a large bowl. In a small saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and poor hot vinegar over cabbage mixture. Combine well, cover and chill at least an hour, and preferably overnight. Garnish with cilantro leaves.

Rating: This one will make you pucker up. It actually provided a nice bright flavor contrast to an Italian sausage soup served with cornbread. I don't think I'd make it again as a serve-alone slaw because a little goes a long way with that sharp vinegar, but if you cut the recipe in half and use it as a relish, it definitely has merit. 

 

Napa cabbage slaw

Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens July/August 2024 issue, although I can't find the original recipe on their site to link to, where it was served as a side for a pork dish. Serves 6-ish.

Ingredients

5 cups shredded Napa cabbage
1 cup sliced yellow pepper strips
½ cup shredded carrot
½ cup snap peas, chopped on the diagonal (or slivered snow pea pods)
¼ cup chopped green onion
3 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon tamari or soy sauce
¼ salt
¼ teaspoon pepper

Method

Combine cabbage, pepper strips, carrot, snap peas and onion in a large serving bowl.

Whisk together vinegar, oils, tamari and salt and pepper. Drizzle over slaw mixture and toss to distribute dressing.

Rating: Colorful, crunchy and with a snappy dressing. It was a nice contrast to a bowl of chili.

Leftover factor: While the Napa cabbage is fairly sturdy, I wouldn't count on making this a day ahead without it losing at least a bit of its crunch. But you could certainly assemble the slaw parts and dressing separately and then toss them closer to serving time. It's not like it instantly wilts or anything like that, so I imagine a hour ahead of serving would still be just dandy. I was struck by how well this slaw would do on a chicken/bean wrap, so I suspect it has other uses.

.

Kaleslaw

Adapted from "Fifty Shades of Kale" by Dr. Drew Ramsey and Jennifer Iserloh. Serves 8 quite readily.

Ingredients
1 bunch dinosaur kale or a mixture of kinds of kale, stems removed, about 10 cups chopped
1 red, orange or yellow pepper sliced thinly or a mix thereof
6 grated carrots (I used a mix of the tri-colored snacking carrots for extra color
1½ Kale-onaise (see recipe below)

Method
Combine chopped kale, sliced pepper and carrots in a large bowl. Toss with dressing and chill for at least an hour before serving or overnight to give it time to break down the kale a bit.

Kale-onnaise

2 cups chopped packed kale
½ teaspoon sea salt
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 cup mayonnaise
Zest and juice of 1 lemon

In a food processor blend kale, salt and garlic until finely chopped. Add mayo and lemon zest and juice and process until smooth.

Rating: The salad is fine enough, but the dressing is one of those that you could inhale. It has a very bright, fresh flavor that tastes of sunnier days. It works well on the salad, as a sandwich spread, pretty much anything you can think of. It does not taste particularly kaley, so it's a great way to use up part of a bunch of kale before it eventually wilts. This usage is a keeper.

Leftover factor: Even kale will start to lose a tad bit of its sturdiness in the face of being in dressing for a few days. It was still OK enough the second day, but I think if I were do it again I would have tossed in some chickpeas with the leftovers and put it over leftover grains for a grain bowl treatment.

Spiked soups

Some people like their bourbon neat. I apparently like mine warmed through, at least sometimes. Here are three soups packed with a little extra punch. Good for those days when you contemplate if the weather can be said to be a blizzard even when it's not actively snowing, just moving existing snow in a most untidy sideways manner, which was the case when this first soup was made. After that we briefly entered false spring mode, but then the snow made a triumphant return. There's at least a month and a half of prime soup weather left, so drink up. 

Spiked pumpkin soup

Adapted from Cooking Light, November 2005 issue. To restore the recipe's lightness, use cooking spray instead of olive oil and low fat milk and sour cream.  

Ingredients
I cup onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
½ teaspoon minced fresh peeled ginger
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1½ cups apple cider
14 ounces broth
⅓ cup bourbon
¼ cup maple syrup
1 29-ounce can pumpkin puree
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground pepper
Sour cream
Chopped fresh parsley

Method

Add a drizzle of olive oil n a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, ginger and cumin. Cook for about 5 minutes until somewhat softened. Add cider, broth, bourbon, syrup and pumpkin. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.

Working in batches puree pumpkin mixture. Add back to sauce pan and stir in milk, flour, salt and pepper  Heat through, stirring frequently. Serve garnished with a dollop of sour cream and chopped fresh parsley. Serves 6.

Rating: A very pleasant soup. Dave calls it drunken pumpkin soup. I'm not sure if I detect the bourbon, but it's probably there as a background note, which seems better than having it be overwhelming forward. A fairly fast, easy fix.

Bourbon corn chowder

Adapted from Barbara Kafka's "Soup: A Way of Life." 

Note: The original recipe called for igniting the bourbon in a small saucepan and letting it flame for a minute before adding it to the soup. I'm sure that would add a lovely deeper caramel note, but I am match-averse stemming from an childhood incident when asked to do the seemingly simple task of lighting the candles on the table when company was coming over. (Don't worry, only a few of the green beans almondine got singed, so the damage was mainly psychic.)

Ingredients

4 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, chopped small
2 (14.75-ounce) cans creamed corn
¼ cup bourbon (see note)
½ cup chicken broth
½ cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 to 3 drops hot red pepper sauce
Ground pepper to taste

Method

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Cook onions in butter over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Stir in corn. Add bourbon (after igniting in a small pan, if desired) and then broth, cream, salt, nutmeg, hot sauce and pepper. Heat through.

Rating: While I'm not usually a creamed corn fan, this makes a quite nice soup. The bourbon is once again more of a background note, adding a sort of silken flavor, if silk can be said to be a flavor. (I'm going with yes.) A very fast fix that's pantry/bar friendly. And then part of me pondered, hmm, what would this be like if I'd made the creamed corn? Luckily, the other part of my brain told me to stop being such a pest to myself and stand down. Makes 4 first-course servings.

This recipe did not call for a garnish, but it occurred to me that if I'd had any fried shallots on hand, that would make a dandy topping for this.

Kentucky bourbon black bean soup

From "The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook" by Albert W.A. Schmid; the restaurant source was Panache, a former French restaurant in Indianapolis and the chef-owner was the late Richard Cottance.

Note: The bourbon in this recipe is by no means cooked off, since it's added as a garnish. Serves 4 somewhat skimpily.

Ingredients

¾ cup finely diced onions
½ cup finely diced carrots
½ cup finely diced celery
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh oregano
1 pinch ground cayenne pepper
1½ cup black beans, divided
3 cups broth
4 tablespoons bourbon
4 tablespoons sour cream
Diced tomatoes
Fresh cilantro sprigs

Method
Film the bottom of a heavy soup pot with a bit of oil. Add onions, carrots and celery and cook, covered, over very low heat until tender but not browned. Add garlic, cumin, oregano and cayenne and cook for about 5 minutes. Add 1 cup of black beans and the broth. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Puree soup. Add remaining ½ cup black beans and heat through.

Serve the 4 servings garnished each with 1 tablespoon of bourbon, 1 tablespoon of sour cream, some diced tomatoes and cilantro.

Rating: Bizarrely, adding a swirl of bourbon as a garnish actually works, at least if you're not concerned greatly about alcohol consumption. I was afraid it would be too in-your-face boozy, but stirring it into a warm soup mellows it immediately. I appreciated the fact that there were actual beans in the soup as well as the pureed variety, which I think helps with the overall appeal of the soup. It was overall fine and worth trying, but I'll stick with another bourbon soup recipe from that same book that has a lot of the same flavors (see below.)

Also, too

I'll add a shoutout to this bourbon chili recipe I've made before, and like a bit better than the black bean soup above.

20 garlic cloves and 5 ingredients yields 1 slow cooker supper

 

The recipe suggests Italian bread to sop up the sauce; we opted for rice since we had it on hand.

Sometimes I forget how wonderful it is at the end of a weekend to have supper already simmering away and ready by Sunday evening. But then I remember my crock pot again.

Beef shanks with red wine and tomatoes

From "The Italian Slow Cooker," by Michele Scicolone. I've dipped into her French slow cooker book for years, but just ran across the Italian version. Same premise, that slowly simmered classics are well suited for taking advantage of what crock pots are truly good for.

Ingredients

20 garlic cloves, peeled
2 cups dry red wine
1 14-ounce can Italian tomatoes
1 4-inch rosemary sprig
3 pounds bone-in beef shanks

Method

Put garlic cloves in the bottom of a slow cooker. Add wine, tomatoes and rosemary. Salt and pepper the beef shanks and add to pot. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours until the meat is falling off the bones tender. 

Rating: A fuss-free way to get a hearty Sunday supper ready. The garlic is beyond spreadable at the point the meat is done, so you get a very nice sauce, and strangely not one that's overwhelmingly garlic flavored. It's not like roasted garlic, which is kind of sticky pasty, but instead almost silky. I don't know that I would call it company food, and I wouldn't call it cheap, since even shanks aren't free, but we ate it happily. 

Four takes on red sauce

The Splendid Table recipe specifies spaghetti, but the day I decided to make this I didn't have any on hand so I cheated and used the penne I did have.

A bowl of red sauced pasta is such a wonderful known quantity, even when they're all different. Here are four options for comfort in a bowl that demonstrate the variation that can be had around a common theme. The guest star ingredients range from salami to pancetta, and ground beef to mushrooms so there's a vegetarian option. So pull out a big can of San Marzano tomatoes, an even bigger pot and have garlic at the ready. The sauces are good to make ahead and reheat. One guess what's for Valentine's Day dinner.

Classic spaghetti with tomato-red wine sauce

A Lynne Rossetto Kasper "Splendid Table" recipe as published in the Minnesota Star Tribune Taste Section, first in 2007 and then again in 2025 when Rossetto Kasper was auctioning off some of her culinary collection. You can see the original recipe here. It's very precise and specifies things such as  5 quarts of salted water in a 6-quart pot. Very, very precise.

Ingredients

2 medium onions, diced
2 celery stalks with leaves, thinly chopped
2 ounces Italian salami, cut into ¼-inch dice
¼ to ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 large garlic cloves, minced

2 "generous" tablespoons tomato paste

⅓ cup dry red wine
½ torn fresh basil leaves

1 (again, generous) tablespoon dried basil
1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes with juice, plus 1 14-ounce can, drained
1 pound spaghetti

Grated cheese for garnish, such as Parmesan, Asiago or Pecorino

Method
Put a large pot of salted water on, ready to bring up to a boil when needed.

Film the bottom of a large, deep skillet with olive oil. Add chopped onion and celery, season with salt and pepper and cook until onion is golden. Add salami and pepper flakes and cook for 2 minutes, Add garlic, tomato paste, red wine and the basil. Cook over medium high heat, stirring often, while red wine is nearly cooked off. (Now would be a good time to crank up the heat under the pasta pot.)

Add the tomatoes to the salami onion mixture, crushing them as you add them. Simmer until mixture thickens, about 8 minutes. 

Add pasta to boiling water and cook until al dente Drain and add to sauce. Serve with grated cheese for garnish.

Rating: Yep, that's a classic for a reason.

Pasta alla Carla

It might seem incongruous to choose an Italian recipe from a cookbook called "The Little French Bakery Cookbook," but it's a recipe author Susan M. Holding learned on a trip to Tuscany from a woman named Carla. Holding trained on pastry at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and runs a cooking school in Wisconsin. 

Note: The basic gist of this recipe is that the vegetables get chopped so finely that they more or less disappear into the sauce when cooked, so when you think you've chopped them enough, keep chopping, and then some more. I contemplated using the food processor but worried I might turn them to liquid. The original recipe lists 1 to 2 pounds of pasta, and suggests starting with 1 pound. Since 1 pound was all I had of any one type, I went with that. My sense is that if you like your pasta drenched with sauce, that 1 pound would work, but if you prefer it to be more nearly dressed than drowned with sauce, that 2 pounds would be closer to the mark if you want to use up all the sauce. I just opted to save the extra sauce to use later on more pasta. I'd say this could serve 6 as a main dish using 1 pound of pasta.

Ingredients
1 (28-ounce) can San Marzano or plum tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 ounces pancetta, diced
1 red onion, finely minced
2 celery stalks, finely minced
1 carrot, finely minced
3 large garlic cloves, finely minced
1 cup parsley, finely minced
1½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon ground pepper
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 cup water

1 pound (or more) long pasta, like fettuccine or spaghetti (I opted for linguine)
Grated Parmesan for garnish

Method
Drain tomatoes, reserving liquid. Run tomatoes through a food mill, or if you're like me and don't have one, puree them in a food processor and drain through a fine mesh sieve. (I reserved the tomato sludge for another use; great to enrich a vegetable soup.)

In a large deep pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add pancetta and cook until crisp and golden. Add onion, celery and carrot and cook until softened, but not browned. Add garlic and cook for a minute. Stir in parsley, salt, sugar, ground pepper, pepper flakes and tomatoes. Add 1 cup water to the reserved tomato liquid and add that to the pot. Bring mixture to a simmer, and cook partially covered for 30 to 45 minutes until sauce is noticeably reduced and thickened, then cover and keep warm while pasta cooks.

While sauce cooks, heat up a large pot of salted water for the pasta and cook until al dente. Drain, return to pan to dry the pasta and toss with some of the sauce to coat. Transfer to serving dish, top with more pasta and serve with Parmesan for garnish.

Rating: No idea if I diced it fine enough since there was no Carla standing over me to judge. There's an unobtrusive background hint of heat from the pepper flakes and the pancetta flavor comes through. Dave approved. I don't know that I'm blown away by it, but it is a nice, basic example of a simple classic pasta sauce, which has a sort of clean quality to it. If you've got the time, it most certainly beats anything out of a bottle.

Black bean Bolognese

This is the cover recipe from the Winter 2026 issue of Bon Appetit. The black beans in question come in the form of black bean garlic paste, which I tracked down at Kowalski's without having to venture into any more exotic source. Serves 4.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 1½-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes
¾ dry white wine
1 pound ground beef
⅓ cup black bean garlic sauce
2 teaspoons brown sugar
12 ounces pappardelle, bucatini or rigatoni
3 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks
Green onions, chopped for garnish

Method

Heat olive oil in a large deep pan over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger and cook until softened and fragrant. Add tomatoes, crushing them a bit as you go. Bring to a simmer and cook for 20-25 minutes until sauce is very thick. Add wine and cook until almost evaporated. If there are still larger chunks of tomatoes, try to mash those smooth. Add ground beef, black bean garlic sauce and brown sugar. Cook until beef is cooked through and simmer for 10-15 minutes to allow the flavor to develop. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove 2 cups of the sauce and set aside.

Cook pasta until just before al dente. Drain, reserving liquid. Toss pasta with sauce in pan and butter. Add sauce and cooking liquid as needed until the pasta is coated. Serve garnished with green onions.

Rating: Dave was emphatic about expressing how much he liked this dish, so it's not unlikely we'll make it again. It's not your traditional Bolognese, but it's a tasty entry into the genre. 

Leftover note: My package of pasta wasn't 12 ounces, so we wound up not needing much of the reserved sauce.  Good to use on another pasta or to turn it into a soup. I'm itching to try this recipe from Amy Sheppard that uses about 3 cups of Bolognese sauce, about a quart and a half of stock and Boursin round for creaminess, topped with a sprinkling of what looks on IG to be parsley.

Rigatoni with quick mushroom Bolognese

From Taste’s Sunday Supper in the Minnesota Star Tribune, taken from “Mostly Meatless,” by America’s Test Kitchen. The only adaptation I made was upping the amount of tomato paste by a tablespoon, partly because it looked like it could use it, and partly so it would get used, since I happened to have 5 tablespoons in a jar in the frig that would be good to use up. Oh, and another clove of garlic so I possibly could actually detect it.

Ingredients
1 pound rigatoni, cooked until al dente, 1 cup cooking liquid reserved
1 pound cremini mushrooms, trimmed and quartered
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
¾ teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons tomato paste
4 garlic cloves, minced
¼ cup white wine
¼ cup grated Pecorino Romano, plus more for garnish
Chopped chives for garnish
Crushed red pepper flakes for garnish

Method

Pulse mushrooms in food processor until finely chopped, about 10 pulses. Heat oil in a large deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms, onion, carrot and salt and cook until mushrooms have exuded their liquid and that liquid has cooked off.

Stir in tomato paste and garlic. Cook about 3 minutes until mixture has tightened. Stir in wine and cook until evaporated. Add cooked pasta, ¼ cup cheese and reserved 1 cup cooking liquid and stir well. Serve garnished with more grated cheese, chives and red pepper flakes.

Rating: If you're looking for a meatless version of a traditional Bolognese this sort of gets at that texture. It comes together fairly quickly once you get everything chopped. It's not a wower, but it's fine enough.

Also, too

All good choices. And instead of making me sick of red sauce, it makes me want to dust off  this Marcella Hazan recipe. So elemental, and so good.