Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

My kids (and myself) prefer this spaghetti sauce to anything store-bought. While the cooking process is long, the result is worth the wait! Your kitchen will smell wonderful for an entire morning or afternoon! I usually quadruple the recipe and freeze the excess. If you prefer meat sauce, you can brown 1 pound of ground beef and 1 large onion sliced thin, add 1 tsp. salt and sprinkle of parsley, then add to the sauce while cooking. — posted by tammyz

Scrambled eggs with ham and onions

I always try to have a prepared meal for my kids when they arrive home from school. A few days ago, I cooked paksiw na pata and all that was needed was to reheat it so that the kids could have an early dinner. But the house helper not only forgot to reheat the paksiw — she also forgot to cook rice. It takes about 20 minutes to cook rice. What was I going to do — make the kids wait that long? That would have meant 20 minutes of incessant whining about how hungry they were. So, I decided to make a quick snack for them — scrambled eggs with ham and onions flavored with lots of herbs.

Eggs are a staple in our kitchen. Very rarely will you catch us egg-less. I enjoyed breakfasts and afternoon snacks of fried eggs and bread when I was a kid; so did my husband. The strange this is that our daughters prefer their fried eggs differently. While most — myself included — prefer eggs cooked sunny side up with the yolk still runny, my 15-year-old daughter wants the yolk well done. My 13-year-old, on the other hand, does not eat eggs cooked sunny side up. She only eats them scrambled. But scrambled eggs, with nothing else, is too plain for her sister. So, we always try to find a middle ground. The day I cooked the scrambled eggs in the photo, that middle ground meant the inclusion of ham and sliced onions.