Food: Mulliga's Mirepoix Spaghetti

We have a vegetarian guest here at my place, which means added challenges to cooking. I normally eat out quite a bit (as one could tell from my blog), but there are few options for vegetarians on the go sometimes - especially stuff that tastes good. So, I cooked up some vegetable spaghetti, mostly inspired by the vegetarian spaghetti that the Hare Krishnas cook up in the Plaza of the Americas.

Ingredients:

2 stalks celery (perhaps 7" long each)
2 carrots (about same size as celery)
3 small onions or two big onions (you want to get a 2:1 ratio of onions to carrots+celery)
4 cloves garlic (less or more if you life, but I love garlic)
1 bottle storebought spaghetti sauce
Salt, pepper, other seasonings
Enough olive oil to cover the pan
2 or 3 tablespoons of butter
1 pound dry spaghetti

Directions:

Dice up the carrots, celery, and onions (this'll take awhile if you're a klutz in the kitchen, like me). Start heating up the oil and butter in a saucepot on medium heat. Mince or thinly slice the garlic. Toss half the onions and all the garlic into the saucepot. After onion gets soft, toss in all the veggies. You may need more olive oil to cover the veggies - make sure the ones at the top don't look "dry." Keep cooking them, with lid on and stirring occasionally, until the carrots stop being rock hard.

At this point, start boiling water in a big pot (~5 quarts). I like to toss some salt in, and if your pot often boils over when cooking dried pasta, you might want to throw in some olive oil to prevent this. Pour in the bottled spaghetti sauce (you could also used diced canned tomatoes and tomato paste) into the saucepot and cover, and keep stirring from time to time. By the time the pasta is al dente (follow the directions on the box to cook), the sauce should be almost done. Make sure nothing's too hard (but don't cook it into a mush), and serve on top of the drained spaghetti.

The mirepoix itself (onions, celery, carrots) can tend to be sweet, so be sure to use enough salt, garlic, and/or seasonings to counteract this.

Serves three. You can feed four if you have side dishes or salads.