Pasta sauce three ways

I am a big believer in homemade sauce. I will make HUGE batches of it and freeze it in gallon Ziploc bag with the air pushed out. Lay them flat and freeze them. Perfect! In a pinch I do love Costco’s marinara. White label, green lettering, totally yummy. 

There are so many variations of tomato pasta sauce and I love them all. But I have a big three that I make over and over.  It is just so nice to have something that is super good and super easy (boil noodles, thaw sauce, mix & done!).

The key to a good sauce is cooking time. It needs to just sit and stew (pun sorta intended). It is the perfect project for a Sunday. Make it in the morning, let it sit all day, turn it off and pack it up at night.

Here are my favorite recipes. The recipes are for a single batch of sauce.  I will make 4-5 times the amounts when I do it, except the meat sauce. That one is already big.

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Roasted vegetable and sausage

My sister actually made this for the Hubster and I when our second babe was born. Even after freezing and thawing, it still tastes fresh!

Ingredients:

1 large onion diced

2 bell peppers (I love yellow for this) chopped

2 zucchini chopped

1 summer squash chopped

Olive oil

2-3 Tbs Italian Seasoning.

1 16 oz can fire roasted tomatoes

2 16 oz cans petite diced or crushed tomatoes

6 links of chicken sausage- medium spicy

3 cloves garlic

 Fresh snipped basil

Directions:

1. Toss the vegetables with olive oil, Italian seasoning, and a little salt. Grill or broil until nearly slightly underdone. Remove the sausage from the casings.
2. In large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add sausage and sauté until turning lightly golden crushing with wooden spoon to break it apart. Add garlic and sauté 1 minute.
3. Add tomatoes and vegetables. Season with salt and pepper and add basil al the very end.

This sauce is one where you can serve it right away or simmer for hours. It really makes very little difference in taste.

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Marinara

Ingredients:

¼ cup olive oil

1 onion diced

2 carrots diced finely

1 rib celery diced finely

3 cloves garlic

2-16 oz cans crushed tomatoes

1-16 oz can diced tomatoes

1 bay leaf

2 sprigs thyme

2 Tbs balsamic vinegar

Directions:

1. In large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion, celery and carrot and sauté until turning lightly golden, about 7 minutes. Add garlic and sauté 1 minute.
2. Add tomatoes, bay leaf, and thyme sprigs. Season with salt and pepper and add vinegar.
3. Cook, uncovered, 20 minutes until thickened. Turn heat to low and allow to simmer for up to 2 hours. Stir at least every 15 minutes.

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Meat Sauce

This one comes courtesy of my friend Nikki. Love ya’ Girlie!!

Ingredients:

3 sausage links

1 pound lean ground beef

1 tsp Garlic powder

1 Tbs Italian seasoning

2 onions (diced)

1 pound sliced mushrooms

3- 27 oz can crushed tomatoes

22 oz tomato sauce

16 oz tomato paste

1 bell pepper diced

2 bay leaves

2 fresh thyme sprigs

Handful fresh snipped basil

Handful fresh flat leaf parsley chopped

½ package pepperoni

2 Tbs sugar

Grated Parmesan

Directions:

1. In large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and sauté 1 minute. Add mushrooms and sauté until slightly soft.
2. In separate pan Cook ground beef with garlic powder and Italian seasoning. Add cooked beef to onion mixture.
3. Slice sausage, or remove from casing and crumble. Cook in beef pan. Once done add to onion and beef pot.
4. Add remaining ingredients. Season with salt and pepper.
5. Turn heat to low and allow to simmer for 10- 12 hours. Stir at least every 25 minutes.

This one is better the longer it simmers!

Dessert and Open Container Laws

My hubby and I are not big drinkers. We ocasionally have a glass of wine or beer. Maybe once a week for my husband and even less frequently for me. Alcohol just doesn't do it for me I guess.

But then there is the Irish Cream cake...

This cake is the exception to my alcohol rule. It is a dense, chocolaty bunt-cake that has a richness that is simply divine. And if you have more than two pieces, I'll take your keys. Literally. I kinda feel like sending pieces home with people violates the open container law. Good thing there is rarely any for people to take home...

It is baked with Irish Cream and vodka in the cake. And the icing? Yeah it's Irish cream and powdered sugar. So. Freaking. Good.

This cake is my standby dessert. It is one of 2 things I make using boxed ingredients, the other being cornbread. (Don't know about the "Food from a Box" issue? Find it HERE.)

I made this for a mini game night we had with some of our friends on Friday. It was ridiculously fun. Probably because we all had our 2 pieces. EVERYTHING is more fun after 2 pieces. :)

Here's the recipe (I gotta take more photos of this stuff):

1 Package yellow cake mix
1-4 oz package instant chocolate pudding
4 eggs
2 Tbs Water
3/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
2 Tbs vodka
3/8 Cup Irish Cream

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix all the ingredients and pour into a prepared cake pan. Bake 40-50 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Icing:
2 Cups Powdered sugar
Irish Cream

Put the sugar in a deep bowl. Slowly mix in small amounts of the Irish Cream (like a Tblespoon at a time) until you get the consistency you want.


Or if you prefer frosting:
Makes enough to frost a 9-inch round layer cake or a 10-inch bundt or tube cake

2 -3oz  packages cream cheese or reduced-fat cream cheese, at room temperature
Approximately  2 tablespoons Irish Cream liqueur
Pinch of salt
1- 16oz package confectioners' sugar, sifted (about 4 1/2 cups)

In a medium bowl, combine the cream cheese, Irish Cream and salt, beating until smooth. Gradually add confectioners' sugar, beating until mixture is smooth and fluffy. Add additional cream as needed to achieve desired spreading consistency.

Hello. My name is Sarah and I suffer from Eco Guilt.

Somebody refered to me as "granola" the other day. It sorta stopped me in my tracks. I mean, don't get me wrong, I "do my part" and I appreciate the Earth as much as the next person. I do my best to pare down the amount of waste my family produces. I carpool. I recycle. But Granola? Me? Come on. I shave my pits and own neither a pair of Birkenstocks or anything tiedyed. I do, however, drive a Subaru.   

Then I got to thinking. I guess I am kinda granola, but fashionably so. At least, I try to be. I buy organic, and do love a good thrift store find. I suppose my most essential carbon footprint reducer are my RuMe bags. I love them. So much so that I wrote a song about them. See?

Oh RuMe Bag 

(Sung to 'Oh Christmas Tree')

Oh RuMe bag, Oh Rume bag 

How I love thee, RuMe bag.

You are the best and Eco kind.

You are abundant in design.

Oh RuMe bag oh RuMe bag.

How I love thee, RuMe bag. 

Okay, okay. It's not SO inventive, but I really do love these little bags. I use them for all things food-in-tow. Anything I would put in a baggie, I use a RuMe bag. They are just lovely!!

They come in all sorts of colors and sizes. I have ten of them. Yes. 10. And they are used DAILY. I have the pockets and baggies. Can't say enough good things. RuMe bags!

 Check out the web site!!!

Tapenade and Cucumbers

I think everyone has their party staples. You know, the things you make for every party because they're a hit and sinfully easy? Mine is tapenade. It's so easy, better when you make it a day or two in advance, and there's ALWAYS someone that wants the recipe. 


I made it last night for a housewarming party a girlfriend of mine had. I also decided to try a new recipe for Greek Salad Bites. Holy Cow were they good! Good thing I made a batch and a half. They were swooped up and gobbled down lightning fast! 


So in the spirit of sharing, here's the recipe for both.


**It should be noted that I have a unnatural obsession with garlic. I always put in WAY more than a recipe calls for. What can I say, I'm afraid of vampires. ;) 


Tapenade-


1 Cup Parsley stemmed and washed
1 Cup pine nuts 
1Cup kalamata olives
2 Tbs capers
1/2 tsp pepper (black is best)
4 cloves of garlic  pressed or minced (you MUST cut it up before you process it. Otherwise you get some bites with no garlic and others that will make you gag.)
2 Tbs lemon juice
1/4 cup Olive oil
1/2 tsp dried basil




Throw everything in a food processor and pulse until the pieces are very small. Do NOT over puree or you will end up with a sludge that is in no way appealing.  Make sure you scrape down the sides of the bowl as you go for the sake of a even consistency. 






Greek Salad Bites
Ok- I confess. I got this one from BHG 100 days of holidays, but I doctored it just a smidge (my love of garlic and all). If you don't  get this e-mail series, you should. It starts a few weeks before Halloween and runs through New Years. This year I got over 100 recipes and decorating ideas. <3 it! this recipe is a "make right before the party". If you do it too far in advance your cucumbers get slimy and floppy. Not appealing. 

• 6 oz  crumbled feta cheese 
• 1/2  cup  dairy sour cream
• 1/4  cup  snipped fresh parsley
• 2  tablespoons  oil-packed dried tomatoes, drained and finely chopped
• 4  cloves  garlic, minced
• 1/2  teaspoon  cracked black pepper
• 1-1/2  medium  cucumbers peeled
• 1/4  cup  finely shredded fresh basil*
• 1/4  cup  chopped pitted kalamata olives

Directions

1. In a small bowl stir together feta cheese, sour cream, parsley, dried tomatoes, garlic, and pepper. Cover and chill for 2 to 24 hours.

2. Bias-slice the cucumbers into 1/4-inch-thick slices (I used a mandolin, much easier). Spoon 1-1/2 teaspoons cheese mixture onto each cucumber slice. Arrange cucumber slices on a serving platter.

3. In a small bowl combine basil and olives. Spoon some of the mixture over each cucumber slice. Serve immediately. Makes 30 appetizers.

If you don't know the basil shredding trick here it is:

Stack your basil leaves on top of each other cup sides up. 

Roll up the stack lengthwise into a small tube. 

       

Slice tube crosswise with a very sharp knife 

and you get very pretty basil ribbons! 

Not bad for a Thursday night

In our house we are big on home cooked meals. But this one, even I was a little selfishly amazed. It was 4:30 when I got home and dinner was on the table by 5:10 and I didn't feel rushed. 

 Pork chops, Israeli couscous, and green beans with shallots all in 40 mins with new recipes too! It would have been less time, but I didn't quite plan it all right so I had to take pans off heat, do something else, put them back on the heat, blah blah blah. But over all, my husband and I decided these were all keepers.Even my 2 year old agreed and ate her whole meal. She even asked for seconds of the greens beans. :)

Yeah!

Meal Planning

Okay so I actually did this last week. I'm just not very good at this whole blogging thing just yet...

Anywho. Meal planning.

It used to be that my sweet husband and I would think of dinner about 2 hours before it was time to eat. One of us would come up with an idea (usually something we've made 30,000 times before). We'd then truck off to the store and buy what ever was needed for the meal. Repeat.

This ended up causing us to eat the same 10 or so dishes until we were sick to death of them. Not to mention the havoc it wreaked on our food budget. So we meal plan (if you don't, you should).

I actually gave it to my husband as a gift last Christmas as part of the $10 gift (We agreed that we would only spend $10 on gifts for each other. My husband did not abide by this rule... more on that later). Sadly, even though I gave it to him as a gift last year, I just finished the project last week.

Here's the scoop:

In the box are slips in 2 colors of paper.

On one color is entrées on the other is side dishes. Each week we select 14 of each color. Then mix and match the entrées and side dishes to make 14 days of meals. (Yes I grocery shop for two weeks at a time. And yes I inevitably forget something or need more of something, so I usually go back in the store on the weekend in the middle of my planned weeks).

On the slips of paper are all our favorite meals. Also included are ones that say: "Something new!"  and "Eat out!"  So on the Something new nights we...try something new! And on the Eat out Nights we...well you get the idea.

So yes there are 2 weeks where we never eat out, and yes there are weeks when I make  new recipes several nights a week. The big thing is that the nights are flexible. For example, if we are supposed to have Vegetable Shepherd's pie on Wednesday and eat out on Friday, but it was a horrid Wednesday. We'll switch! But we aren't allowed to eat out unless we pulled it. Make sense??

Let's talk benefits:
1) I can't tell you how much money this saves us!!
2) We no longer make the same thing until we are sick of it

3) I get a chance to make all those yummy recipes I find online, in magazines, etc. There are blank ones in the box too! That way if we find a recipe we like it goes into the box!!
4) It is a beautiful thing to just have our menu planned. There is no thought needed during the week, it's all done a head of time.

LOVE IT!

I'm not pretentious. I swear.

Do I love cooking? Yes

Am I good cook? From what I’ve been told- better than most

Do I find something magical about how raw ingredients come together to form some fabulous? Yes

Do I have two small children and a husband that I have to feed regularly? Yes

Do I always have time to whip up a rockstar 3 course meal? Not on your life.

Thusly, are there times I want to pull a box of something (hamburger helper, brownies, Mac n” Cheese, etc) out of the cupboard and serve it? Heck yes.

Do I? Never. (Okay, not never. There are 2 things I make that involve box mixes. Cornbread and Irish Cream cake. You can find the recipe for the cake HERE.  Cornbread on the other hand, read the back of the box.)

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I'm not pretentious about food. I swear. I just can't make things out of a box. No really. I can’t. Yeah, those Betty Crocker brownies that look so good and chewy on the box.  They end up black and burned on the outside and RAW on the inside when they come out of my oven (any oven that I use actually, so no blaming my appliances please).

My friends make fun of me about it. Pretty regularly actually. They used to say that I was being silly and just didn’t want to admit that I was just snobby. So I decided to prove it.

For my husband’s birthday a few years back I made lemon bars out of a box. Can you say disaster??  My dear friend Nikki (whom I ADORE) was with me the whole time. She made brownies (the back up plan I insisted on). For the record: she made fun of me when I told her we would need to do a second dessert. And that if it was to be out of a box, she would have to do it. I was to have NO part in it.

So we mixed our boxes and the three other ingredients together. She dutifully watched as I did exactly as the box said. We put them in the oven at the same time (Yes they were to be cooked at the same temperature. We double checked.)

Low and behold 30 minutes later she had beautiful brownies and I had…yellow mush. So we figured it just needed more time. So we put it in and when we checked back…yellow mush in the center and blacked edges.... Sigh

My friends no longer make fun of my box disability. They just relish in the benefits of home cooked meals from scratch.

I guess there are worse things in the world. 

Me blogging?!?!

I am the last person I would have expected to start a blog. Yet here I am. Who knows how long this will run, or how many times I will post, but here I go. I am challenging myself to explore my own domesticity and write about it. I am a self proclaimed workaholic with two small children. I vow to try and find the sublime in domesticity.  To find the happiness in cooking, cleaning, crafting, and making my house the home I want it to be for myself, my husband and my girls.

Perhaps I'll accomplish this by trying a new recipe, doing one of  the 2000 creative somethings I see in magazines and online, or just trying to find the pleasure in the "never dones" (laundry, dishes, vacuuming, anything else that once you do it you have to do it all again). I'm not egotistical enough to think that anyone else will read this. Hell, I may not even read it. But here I am.

And onward I go...