Last night, my sweet husband decided to help me out by cooking dinner. I was tired, after working at the zoo all day (8am to 4:30pm), and didn’t feel like cooking. We had planned on grilling out, but the steaks were still frozen and baked potatoes take some time, so he offered to make pasta.

He disappeared into the kitchen for a while, and I heard him opening and closing various doors, and could smell something cooking, but he cooks all the time so I didn’t expect him to need my help.

About twenty minutes later, he brought me a beautiful plate of pasta, with some Italian sausage (we had some left over from the last time we grilled out) and a chunky sauce. I took a bite and immediately tasted two things: garlic (which is good in pasta sauce) and something spicy I couldn’t put my finger on. I took a couple more bites to figure out what it might be.

Finally I looked closely at the sauce. I poked and prodded the tomato chunks, which looked a little orange to me, and finally asked the sixty-thousand dollar question:

“Honey, where did you get this sauce?”

Let’s go back a couple of weeks. We had some friends over for dinner a little while back, and they brought the appetizer and dessert with them. The dessert was a plate of coconut cupcakes. The appetizer? Homemade mango garlic salsa. It wasn’t too sweet or too spicy and smelled like garlic.

“I found it in the fridge. Isn’t this one you made?”

Long silence.

And then I started laughing.

At least the salsa-sauce had enough garlic (and sausage) in it to eat. Mostly.

My immediate family members will now be sure that J is one of us; this is not the first time homemade salsa has made it onto a pasta dish.