my homemade spaghetti sauce

If you are wondering why I am blogging about spaghetti click here to read my previous post.

I wish I had a really cool story about this recipe to share with you. Something like “I got it from my great grandmother who came from Italy” or something equally exciting…. but i don’t. Truth is that I am just a white girl from Texas with not-a-one-drop-of-Italian-blood-in-me that loves to eat. I made this up a few years ago when cleaning out my fridge, and I loved it. I have been making it this way ever since.

get your veggies together:

To prepare the tomato sauce you need to first de-core your tomatoes and slice a “x” in the bottoms. Then place tomatoes in a large stock pot filled with cool water. Bring to boil.

While the tomatoes are coming to a boil get your veggies together. I am using 1 zucinni, 1 yellow squash, and a handful of baby carrots. Shred them and place them in a large mixing bowl.

Then chop your onions, garlic, bell pepper, portabella mushrooms, parsley, oregano and basil. Add to the bowl of shredded squash and carrots. Although it is a little more time consuming, I find that picky eaters don’t complain about the veggies if you chop them super-small.

By the time you are done chopping all of your veggis your tomatoes should be ready. You can tell if they are ready by looking at their skins. If the skin is coming off, their done. Drain the tomatoes and pick off the skin. The skin is really hot, so you may want to let it cool. I don’t have all the feeling in my right hand because when I was 15 caught it on fire while working at the food court. I only suffered minor burns, and thanks to some really awesome cream from my doctor you can’t even tell I was burnt… unless I’m cold… then my hand turns puple where the burns where. Anyways, because I can’t feel the heat, I useally pick the skins off right away when they are hot because I don’t like to waste time. Just be careful. Don’t burn your self.

While you are peelilng the tomatoes, pour some oil oil in the stock pot that once had the tomatoes in it. Add the shredded and chopped veggies to the oil and season with freshly ground black peper, kosher salt flakes and crushed red pepper flakes.

By the time it takes you to peel all the tomatoes your veggies should be cooked, and covered in their own broth. As they cook down their water comes out and makes a nice vegtable stock, we’ll use this to thin out the sauce later. Add the peeled tomatoes to the pot of cooked veggies and mash them down. Let it simmer while we prepare the meat.

Now get three pounds of ground beef. Season it with freshly ground black pepper, crushed red pepper flakes and kosher salt. Cook it until its almost done. When about 80 % of the beef is browned drain the fat and add 24 ounces of tomatoe paste and stir to combine. It will be really thick at this point, but don’t worry.

add the beef mixture to the veggie mixture and stir to combine.

Now, I also made homemade whole wheat noodles to eat with this. I’ll have to show you those photos later… I hope you like my sauce!

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Recipe for an awesome day:

In one of the blogs I read, jesslovesjesus, I have noticed a pattern when Jess has good days – it always starts out with Prayer Time while she is alone in her prayer closet sipping coffee. I decided that I would try this today, and see how it went… it was AWESOME. Sam spent the night at my mom’s house last night (because I was there until 3am getting my etsy site up and running) and Casey had to work this morning. When Casey and I woke up this morning we had about an hour of time together. During the week he gets up and leaves at 4:30am to go to his full time job, and then works until 11pm or so at his part time job. So, we don’t get much time together during the week. We try to make Thursday’s family days where Sam and I spend all day together doing things together, and all night the three of us hang out. This week Casey was asked to work Thursday night so we missed out on our family time. After our time together this morning, Casey gave me the grocery money for the week (because… we replaced the stove we lost in the fire and we can actually cook now!) with an additional ten dollars for myself. I got dressed and prayed about today – my alone time with Jesus. I excitedly got dressed and headed out to the store where I carefully choose my groceries and took my time shopping. This is the first time I went shopping alone in a long time. It makes a huge difference when you don’t have a toddler with you, even if they are very well behaved like Sam. I got all the groceries on my list and a few extras and spent EXACTLY what I had budgeted to spend, right down to the cent. Then I used my “me money” from Casey to get a new 2G Micro SD Card for my camera, a sugar free decaf iced coffee from McDonalds and a Sunday paper. The man who sold me the paper also gave me a $5 gift card to Wal-Mart because of a special the Houston Chronicle was running today. We try not to shop at Wal-Mart very often (because I feel like they are killing the small businesses of America) but, of course, I welcomed the gift card.

So now I am home, and I am about to start cooking my first “real” meal on my new stove. Casey and I LOVE to cook, and our ONLY arguments are over who gets to cook each week (seriously!). I choose to make my favorite dish today, homemade spaghetti, and to share my secret recipe with you today.

Here’s the veggies we are gonna start with, along with 3 pounds of ground beef. If you are a vegetarian, like I used to be, then you can skip the beef. It will be tasty either way.

I’ll be back later with the recipe and photos of the steps I take to make it. See ya then.

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