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Monday, September 28, 2015

The Most Tasty Bolognese Sauce and I Make a Cool Discovery This Week - a Manitoulin Island Cover!

So I made the bolognese sauce that I referred to in this morning's post tonight and served it with gnocci. All I can say is OMG!! Unbelievable! The most tasty pasta sauce that I think I have ever tasted.

I varied the recipe from the one in the book by substituting sherry cooking wine for the red wine and ground beef in place of ground veal.  The chicken livers add a depth of flavour without any liver taste. You will need:

1 large celery stalk
1 large carrot
1 medium onion
1/4 cup of chopped fresh sage
1/2 cup of chopped fresh basil
1.5 cups of chicken stock, preferably the roasted chicken stock that I mentioned in this morning's post.
1.5 cups of dry red wine or cooking wine.
1 large can of chopped fresh tomatoes
1/3 lb fresh chicken livers
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground lamb
1/2 pound ground pork

Start by using the food processor to chop all the vegetables fine. Heat about 2 tbsp. of the oil in a large stock pot over medium heat and fry the chopped vegetables for 10 minutes or so.

Then use the food processor to chop both the sage and the chicken livers together and then add them to the vegetables and cook for 2-3 minutes until no red or pink colour remains. Add one or two pinches of salt and pepper while you are cooking.

Then add the ground meat in the 1/2lb batches. Brown each batch thoroughly and add a pinch each of salt and pepper before you add the next one. When all the meat is added, cook, stirring constantly until there is no red or pink colour.

Then add the wine. Turn up the heat to high and boil until the wine is almost gone. Make sure that any clumps of meat have been broken up. Now add the tomatoes, the broth and the basil. Stir and bring to a gentle boil. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for at least an hour, and as long as 3 hours until the sauce is thick and rich.

Serve with your favouite pasta and enjoy!

As I had said last week, I am working on the 1875-1888 Registered Letter Stamps. Among the items I am listing, are some covers franked with the 2c orange registered stamp. I bought three of these covers from a British seller on e-bay some 3 months ago. They didn't seem particularly special when I bought them. One of them was this cover:





I looked up the town names shown in the three cancellation handstamps. The handstamp on the front of the envelope is where the cover was mailed. The backstamps show the route that the cover took before it reached its final destination which is shown in the handwriting on the cover:

1. The cover was mailed from Kagawong, ONT on March 5, 1877;
2. It reached the post office at Little Current on March 9, 1877
3. It reached its final destination of Manitowaning, on March 19, 1877.

Now this would not normally be that special as it was common for mail at this time to pass through a transit point before reaching the recipient. No, what makes this cover special is where those three towns are located. They are all communities in Manitoulin Island. Manitoulin Island is an island in Lake Huron. It is the circled island in the map below:



Image result for manitoulin island

The island is about 1,000 square miles and had a population of around 12,000 in 2012. As the Wikipedia article states, it was not opened up for non-native settlement until 1862.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitoulin_Island

That means that this cover was mailed in Manitoulin Island to a recipient in Manitoulin Island, a mere 15 years after the island was opened up for settlement. The fact that it took 2 weeks to reach its recipient, some 93 km away attests to how sparsely populated the island was at this time, and how little infrastructure there was for mail carriage.  Consequently this is a very scarce, if not rare item of early Ontario postal history.

Thank God for the internet and Wikipedia. It makes unraveling these mysteries a piece of cake.

2 comments:

  1. The business and relationship stuff you write about intrigues me - the recipes less so.

    I am confused.

    Were you 'a Partner at a medium sized firm', as noted in the About Me section, or an Employee as noted at the top of the Blog.

    And how do you expect to make any sort of a living, with SALES in the neighborhood of $2,000 per month. That means your INCOME is 1/2 of that or probably less. Don't your sales have to exceed $100,000 to make this thing worthwhile.

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    Replies
    1. I am happy that you find some intrigue in the things I write about.

      I was a partner as I stated in my profile. But I was a non-equity partner. After a while as a non-equity partner you realize that your position is not really that much different from an employee. I didn't have the power to change directions and set the overall strategic direction of the firm. Now I'm in charge.

      I definitely cannot make a living at my current sales level. But it takes time to reach the sales level I'm aiming for. That is why I saved enough to last me until 2017.

      Right now I am listing my inventory, which takes time and working on my blogs to gain exposure. If you are not a stamp collector it can be hard to imagine sales being over $100,000 annually. But I know that with a good customer base it is entirely doable.

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