Those who know me well know that I do not have a background of any culinary art of any kind. Just ask my husband about the time I cooked lasagna for him in college and didn’t pre-cook the noodles or when as a newlywed I substituted thawed ice cream for milk when I ran out of milk.
No, kitchen common sense was never an inate trait. But last night I think I’ve shown that I’ve come a long way.
I was actually cooking pasta sauce for a baked pasta meal I would make for my next freezer meal day. Along with the pasta sauce, I was cooking spaghetti sauce for the spaghetti our family was eating that night. (Homemade is on the right.)
As Matt was getting the sauce for his spaghetti, he had two sauces in view. One was the spaghetti sauce: store bought spaghetti sauce, 1/2 lb. ground beef, and 1 tsp. italian seasoning. In the other pot was my pasta sauce: a combination of store bought tomato sauce, tomato sauce I had canned last summer from the garden, ground beef, and homemade spaghetti sauce mix that I adapted from a recipe I found online.
Matt smelled the homemade concoction and couldn’t help but taste it. I laughed as he complained that he wanted that on his spaghetti, not the store bought sauce.
So perhaps the pasta sauce that I created for a completely different meal has become our new homemade spaghetti sauce. Since it probably isn’t a cheaper sauce than the store bought (considering the tomato sauce as base), I probably won’t use it until I can get tomatoes out of my garden next summer and make homemade sauce. So this is definitely a recipe I’ll be doing again in the summer!
In case you would like to try it, here is the recipe:
2 lbs. ground beef, browned and drained
4 cans tomato sauce
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
1/4 cup green peppers
2 tbsp. instant minced onion
2 tbsp. cornstarch
2 tbsp. parsley flakes
1 tbsp. sea salt
2 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. red pepper flakes
2 tsp. italian seasoning
2 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. basil
Combine all ingredients in deep frying pan and simmer for 1 1/2 hours, uncovered. This recipe makes 2 quarts and 1 pint.