About a week ago, I can home with a 25 lb box of beautiful Roma tomatoes from our food co-op/ministry. We’d had a plethora, and I mean plethora, of tomatoes that week and I just couldn’t stand to see them go to waste. Besides, my friend “P” had pointed out that she was going to take a box home and make marinara sauce for the freezer. Being the competitive person that I am, I hastily decided I could/should do it to. See that Band Wagon rollin’ by?? Watch me jump right on!
Yes, this good ol competitive nature of mine gets me into trouble all the time. Let’s just say I’m a huge work in progress and leave it at that, shall we?
Anywho… I love P, I loved her idea and I loved the prospect of being a thrifty provider of sorts for my family. But I don’t think I fully realized the magnitude of marinara sauce that 25 lbs of tomatoes was going to make until I started chopping. See, added to the whole time issue (good marinara sauce has to simmer for hours folks… hours!), I don’t have a food processor. My hand-me-down processor from my sweet mother-in-law broke about a year ago and I’m just too cheap to go spend $50+ on another one. I have hands and a nice big knife after all.
However, eeeoons a couple hours later, after only getting about a third of the tomatoes chopped, I realized I was in trouble. Not quite like sinking-of-the-Titanic-kind-of-trouble but trouble none the less. Thankfully, my dear friend A dropped her processor off at my house and saved my sanity the day. Thanks again A!
I now have many, many, many ziplocs full of marinara sauce in my freezer and I feel prepared for the end of the World. Or for an army of hungry Italians… which ever comes first.
All that to say, try my Marinara Sauce recipe! It’s actually my Mom’s recipe for her Lasagna sauce with a few tweaks and additions. Like onions. Onions and my Mother are mortal enemies, like they are with a lot people, and so we grew up, for the most part, with onions always omitted from recipes. I can attest that this recipe is still delish without the onions. But if you have a not-so-secret love affair with onions like I do, throw those bad boys in and live it up!
The recipe is listed on the left side of this page, under “Cooking”, or on my Cooking page (click on the “Cooking” header at the top of this page) or you can save yourself the hassle and just click right here.
Let me know what you think.
My mom’s Lasagna recipe to follow soon…
5 comments
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August 14, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Becky
Good for you! I’m going to jump on that same bandwagon, lol. And what a nice friend you have dropping by her food processor for you to use!
If you ever do invest in a new food processor, I recommend getting the basic, Hamilton Beach one. They’re around $35 or so from Walmart or Target, and work just as well (actually much simpler to use) than the high dollar Quisinart ones. I recently recieved the latter as a gift, and quite honestly prefer the old Hamilton Beach one for ease of use and less parts to assemble/wash…and the bowl holds more, too, for big batches of salsa or guacamole, for instance.
They save hundreds of hours of food-prep time in the kitchen and countless dollars for being able to mass process vast amounts of stuff bulk purchased.
August 15, 2009 at 9:13 am
runningamuck
Thanks Becky. My hand-me-down was the most basic of basics too. It was a Cuisanart but only had two buttons… on and off and just one bowl and blade. Well, acutally, I think it had a couple blades but I only used one of them. It was perfect. That’s what I’d like again. Mostly because I just don’t have much room to store anything bigger. I’ll check out the Hamilton Beach ones, THANKS!
August 15, 2009 at 8:51 am
Jerri
Have to chime in that I LOVE my Kitchen Aide food processor. It is SO smart in its design that my kids can help me and I never have to worry about food flying to the ceiling or kids getting hurt, etc. The circuit to make the motor run is only complete (complete circuit = power) when the fp bowl and lid are in the exactly correct and locked position. So, I can even leave the fp “on”, slide the lid to the unlocked position and the power stops. I hope that makes sense, cause it is really cool!
I did tomato sauce from our garden roma’s several years ago and quickly realized it was a heck of a lot of work for what amounted to a couple large Costco cans of tomato sauce (that only cost about $3 each at Costco. Time verses savings was not in my favor!). **sigh**
August 15, 2009 at 9:18 am
runningamuck
My Cuisanart was similar so I understand what you’re a sayin’. =0) And I agree, that is too much work for just tomato sauce. Especially for a famiy your size. It’s be gone in a week! But doing the marinara sauce was only a little more work (really just time since I only had to throw everything in and then just let it simmer all afternoon) and more worth it in my book… and for my smaller family. I think I got about 10 meals out of it?? Not to shabby for an afternoon’s work.
August 17, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Amy @ Experience Imagination
Wow, I don’t think I could live without onions.
They are on our shopping list every week because we eat so many of them!
I have a great from-fresh-tomatoes sauce recipe that includes the line, “Simmer for five hours, stirring occasionally.” Yeah, that recipe doesn’t get made too often around here.
Enjoy your many pasta meals this winter!