If you have a lifestyle which includes entertaining crowds of friends and relatives, your kitchen larder should have something you can feed a crowd on short order. My own experience is that nothing fits the bill better than a pasta dish.

The pasta itself can be spaghetti or macaroni which can be stored for months at a time in its dry state on a pantry shelf, or some of the cheese-filled specialty pastas such as ravioli or tortellini which are usually kept in their uncooked state in the freezer. The pasta itself is easily cooked, almost invariably boiled in a big pot of water, with a spoonful or two of salt thrown in for good measure. The pasta must be stirred regularly so that it doesn't stick together, and is declared "properly cooked" when the cook samples the pasta, and declares the texture "perfect".

If you expect to maintain any social standing within polite society, and expect to be spoken well of, after you are up in heaven, YOU CANNOT FEED YOUR GUEST STORE-BOUGHT TOMATO-SAUCE atop your pasta. You must cook a nice tomato "RAGU", i.e., a rich sauce simmered for several hours. The way to have rich, hours-long simmered ragu readily available is to make your sauce in massive quantities and freezing it in handy one quart containers.

I usually make my tomato sauce 20 quarts at a time on a lazy Friday night, & place it in plastic freezing containers the following morning. (Now, if I had married a nice Italian girl like my aunt Carmella told me to, I wouldn't have to make the sauce; if not for my high culinary standards, my otherwise practical Dutch wife would be perfectly content to let Paul Newman make our sauce.)

Here is a recipe for 8 quarts.

Gather the following:

   1 VERY SHARP Butcher's knife,
   1 Cutting board,
   8 quart (or larger) STEEL sauce pot, & cover,
   1 Large (10 or 12 inch) black iron fry pan, & cover,
   2 mixing bowls,
   1 mixer-blender,
   8 one-quart freezing tubs,                                
                               as well as,

   5 two-pound cans of plain crushed tomatoes,
   12 ounces tomato paste,
   2.5 Lbs ground pork,
   28 to 32 ounces fresh mushrooms,
   1 medium (handball) sized onion,
   4 cloves (sub-sections) from a bulb of garlic,
   2 Tablespoons Basil,
   1 Tablespoon Oregano, 
   1 Tablespoon Parsley,
   1/2 can, frozen Concord (100% real) grape JUICE concentrate 
        (original TOTAL can size -  for 1 quart of juice.
         n.b.; NOT GRAPE DRINK!!! - it will ruin the sauce!!! ),
   Extra Virgin Olive oil, and,
   salt.

Begin by peeling the onion, removing the hard top and bottom of the core, and carefully slicing the onion from top to bottom in 1/8 inch slices. Cut your onion slices again so that you are left with straight strips of onion. In a similar fashion, peel your garlic sections and slice them into 1/8 inch or thinner slices.

Pour an 1/8 inch of extra virgin olive oil into the black iron fry pan, and heat the fry pan under a medium heat. The tasty and aromatic extra virgin olive oil burns easy, so don't make it too hot. Throw a single slice of onion into the pan; when it begins to "fry", throw the rest of your onion and garlic into the pan. Cook until the onions are translucent, and just beginning to brown. Place your 8 quart STEEL sauce pot on an adjacent, burner, with the burner OFF. Empty the contents of your pan, including the olive oil, into the sauce pot.

Clean & rinse your mushrooms of all soil, using a toothbrush if necessary. (n.b.; Mushrooms are normally not grown in topsoil!) Carefully slice your mushrooms into 1/8 inch slices. Fry them in extra virgin olive oil, in the same fashion as the onions. When the mushrooms begin to look translucent, place 2/3 of them into the sauce pot (with the sauce pot burner still off.) Place the remaining third in a mixing bowl.

Now lightly salt your fry pan, and cook the 2 and a half pounds of ground pork until it begins to brown. (Beef, or a mixture of beef and pork may be substituted.) Place two thirds of the meat in the sauce pot, and the remaining third in your mixing bowl.

Now the next part is unorthodox, but will result in a sauce so tasty and thick, that the people you feed will spend the rest of their lives trying to figure out how you did it. Fill your blender to a half of its height with crushed tomato; now begin scooping the remaining third of the cooked meat (from the mixing bowl), into the blender so that you have an inch left at the top. Blend well, until all the meat has been pureed. Empty your blender into the sauce pot, and repeat with the remaining meat, until it is gone. Repeat process with the cooked mushrooms in the mixing bowl.

Place the remaining crushed tomato (10 lbs total) directly in your sauce pot, along with the 12 ounces of tomato paste; add 2 tablespoons basil, 1 tablespoon oregano, and 1 tablespoon parsley. Now, turn on the burner under the sauce pot to a medium setting, and stir the sauce every seven minutes or so. (Be careful not to burn your sauce!). When the sauce begins to slowly bubble, turn the burner to a low setting, and continue stirring every ten minutes or so. Let the sauce simmer in this fashion, stirring, for three hours; then turn the light under the sauce off, mix in 1/2 can of frozen grape juice concentrate (or 375 ml lambrusco, burgundy, port, muscatel, or, concord grape wine,) and let it sit (covered) several hours (7-8) until it is at room temperature. The sauce will thicken, as it sits.

When your sauce is at room temperature, you can stir it again, and distribute it in 1 quart plastic freezing tubs; stir the sauce pot constantly as you place its contents in the freezing tubs. You may now freeze your sauce containers; it will keep well for at least four months.

When you need your sauce, you can take it out and sit it on the counter, (on a plate), to defrost, the morning of the day you are to use it. If you forget, you may place the frozen sauce it in a covered STEEL pot with a quarter inch of water, and cook it on a low light until it defrosts and cooks. If worse comes to worse, you may put the frozen block of sauce in an appropriate cooking container and microwave it.

(n.b.; Don't ever use an aluminum pot to cook a red sauce, as the natural acid of the sauce will dissolve the metal. If you use wine instead of grape juice concentrate to sweeten up your sauce, you may have to add some addtional tomato paste. The sharp butcher's knife, with which you cut the onions and mushrooms, can also be used on people who try to sample your sauce before it is ready.)