I am fully aware that writing about how I enjoy shopping at Lunds & Byerly’s is about as cool as talking about how I’ve started listening to this amazing new band called The White Stripes, which features a brother-sister team that sings rock songs.

But the important thing to note is my context for doing so.

I recently spent nearly six years living in Boston, Massachusetts, the American epicenter of “surly.” Going to a grocery store in Boston was inevitably a mixture of terse, silent, rude, and gruff. You do, of course, acclimate, and it’s not as though life out East was an unmitigated pain in the ass. There was, for example, really good pizza. And clam chowder.

Coming back to the Midwest was exactly what my fiance and I hoped it would be: a return to people behaving more or less decently to one another as a default. And whenever I go to Lunds, the level of quality and service is pretty much an affirmation that the move was precisely the right thing to do. They’ve got a not-too-chatty but extraordinarily helpful butcher. A professional cheesemonger. Even well-mannered and strangely cheerful checkout people.

Now, I realize that Lunds can be pricey — sometimes wicked pricey. $6 for a small plastic container of Easter candy? Are you smoking extremely potent Danish power skunk?

And I also realize that Lunds recently put D’Amico pasta sauces on sale, something for which I have not yet forgiven their management. The D’Amico “spicy classic” variety I tried — which tasted somewhat like watery, vinegar-tainted ketchup — was so bad that I haven’t dared to open the jar of vodka marinara I also bought (it was two jars for $6, which isn’t exactly a steal for inedible sauce.)

That said, as a shopping experience, Lunds almost always delivers. I like wide aisles. I like good lighting. I like clean conditions, and a good selection of organic and/or free range options. It’s really a nice place to get the marketing done. And I like samples that feature a hearty, Midwestern emphasis on cheese. And sometimes brownie bites.

Plus: the store-brand chocolate chip cookies are trans-fat free and AWESOME. Eat that, Kowalski’s.

Now, on to a recipe.

THE PASTA SAUCE I RECENTLY MADE MYSELF FROM STUFF I BOUGHT AT LUNDS WHICH IS MUCH, MUCH BETTER THAN THE D’AMICO SAUCE, AND PROBABLY CHEAPER PER OUNCE

Makes About One Metric Crapton of Sauce

2-3 Tablespoons of olive oil
1 large onion, diced
4-5 shallots, diced
1 cup of mushrooms, diced
4-6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 jalapeno, minced
Fresh rosemary, salt, pepper, cayenne, brown sugar, other seasonings
1 lb. of uncooked spicy Italian sausage, removed from its casing
1-2 strips of thick-cut bacon, cut up into 1/2 inch square bits
1 cup of red wine
1 28 oz. can of diced fire-roasted tomatoes
1 28 oz. can of whole, peeled tomatoes
4-5 tablespoons of tomato paste

This makes a hearty, meaty red sauce. So if you like light, bright and elegant, move on. If you like something rib-stickingly warm and asskicking, then may be your sauce.

Dice the large shallots and a bigass onion. Throw those into the heated olive oil and cook ‘em down until they get brown and tender. Near the end of this process, add a cup or so of diced mushrooms, if you’d like to.

Meanwhile, in another pan, cook a slice or two of bacon until it starts to get crisp. Then push in the hot Italian sausages (fresh from the butcher, casings removed) and cook them with the bacon until the sausage is browned thoroughly and broken up into little bits.

Throw the jalapeno and garlic in with the onions and mushrooms. Stir ‘em around and let them hang out for a minute until they smell awesome. Add a teaspoon or so of diced rosemary, some salt, some pepper and whatever other seasonings you want, and stir them around. Add the red wine. Get that simmering pretty good.

Now, push in two big cans of tomatoes (I like using one of whole peeled, one of diced fire-roasted), the tomato paste, and your sausage and your bacon (strained for grease).

Bring to a gentle simmer, and start carefully playing with adding salt, pepper, cayenne, brown sugar, oregano and other seasonings to make a sauce you really like. Cook down to preferred consistency, probably an hour or two.