Speaking of recipes....

I was reading my grandfather's recipe for spaghetti sauce -- which makes over 3 gallons, judging by what goes into it -- and thinking, "Only four ingredients? I was sure it was more complicated than that!" The four ingredients, for the record, are four large cans of tomato puree, and some hamburger, pepperoni, and sausage.

Then I actually read the directions, which involve frying an onion in olive oil, making meatballs with the hamburger and bread crumbs, eggs, salt, pepper, garlic salt, et cetera., and realized: Those are not the ingredients in the sense of everything that goes into the sauce. Those are just the things that you need to buy. Everything else is just stuff that Granddad would have automatically had around the kitchen, like the knives and hot water from the tap.