Basic tomato sauce

Tomato sauce is a staple in our house.  It is a reliable tastey 'dip' for toddlers, as well as a perfect fast meal with a bit of pasta.  We also use it as pizza sauce, and as a base to add things to and make barbecue sauce or even a mild salsa.  We like to make big batches and store a lot of it in jars in the freezer, then whenever our jar in the refrigerator gets low, we bring out a new one to defrost.

The key to making a sauce that is so versatile, though, is to keep it simple.  No adding oregano or basil or other spices, which would be great as a pasta sauce, but if you use it on beans and eggs with cilantro might not taste entirely right.

Simple pasta sauce recipe:

Six 28 oz cans of whole tomatoes
teaspoon of salt
splash of olive oil
5-6 garlic cloves, diced

Open your cans of tomatoes and add them (two at a time for us) to a food processor or blender to puree them, and add the salt.  (or we just recently bought an immersion blender, so now we put them in a big pot and puree them there!).  Take the biggest pot you've got, heat it up on medium heat, then add the olive oil, maybe a tablespoon for the whole batch.  After it's hot and sizzling a little, add the diced garlic cloves.  Sautee the garlic for maybe a minute, then add all your pureed tomato and stir it around.  Then keep heating the sauce until it's as thick as you want it.  For instance, we like our pizza sauce pretty thick, but our pasta sauce more thin.  So we will make it more on the thin side, knowing we might have to add some tomato paste to it on pizza night.  The higher you turn the heat, the faster it will thicken up, but the more often you need to stir it to keep it from burning.  A lower heat requires less stirring, and is fine for a long day that you'll be hanging out at home, anyway!

The face of a pasta lover

Fancy desserts part two

My husband requested a fruit tart for Father's day - a buttery crust, creme pat/ custard filling, with fruit on top.  So I made an additional one for my LPLD girls!

I mixed graham crackers crumbs with an egg white for the crust (baked it at 350 for 10-20 min), filled it with instant vanilla pudding (with skim milk), and beautiful fruit on top, and even microwaved some strawberry jelly to brush on top to make it shiny and fantastic.  I dare you to try to tell which is which!  My eldest requests a lemon pudding next time, for some contrasting flavors.

I continue to struggle with the pie crust, though.  It stuck to the pie plate so horribly that most wasn't eaten, sigh, and it made a mess of serving it.  The leftovers the next day came out quite easily, as the pudding had softened the crust a bit - so not as crunchy, but prettier?  Maybe I'll add some crushed almonds for a bit of crunch (and fat, sigh), and plan to serve it the next day?  I've also tried graham cracker crumbs combined with apple sauce and had the same issue.  I will find a good fatless crust solution one day!

Can you tell which is fat free?

Fancy Desserts in a Time of Pandemic

I've been hooked on watching the Great British Baking Show for a few years, now.  In Germany I had to see the episodes slightly illegally on Netflix (apparently if you live in Germany you don't have access to the show, but if you live in the States you do).  It's much easier here, and I love to watch it on my phone while I pump breastmilk at work.

Sometimes they have great low fat options.  Because of them, I am learning about fatless sponges (cakes) and ALL the different varieties of meringue.  And I have some time between shifts at work, with the Covid Quarantine, and my kids could definitely use a fancy dessert as a pick-me-up in this weird and stressful time!

I made my first meringue layer cake last week, after inspiration from the GBBS, using a powdered egg white that we had leftover from Christmas gingerbread house frosting/glue.  It got rave reviews!  I put raspberry jelly between the first two layers, fat free whipped topping and cherries between the second two layers, and a few stripes of chocolate syrup on top.  Oh! And I put drops of blue food coloring in with the meringue while I piped the layers out, to give it a pretty blue stripe.  The occasion was the Annunciation, so it needed some blue for Mary!



The first batch that I made, I cooked for too long and didn't add sugar to the meringue, so it tasted awful and curled up into an unusable mess.  Luckily, our chickens still liked it!

But the second attempt turned out well.  I used a silicon baking sheet to weight it down and prevent curling.  Monica said I put too much jelly on, but it was otherwise good.  Darn near impossible to cut cleanly - we ate it all in one night!

Previously I tried making Jaffa cakes from the GBBS, but I think the chocolate on top has a bit too much fat.  I also bought some Jaffa cakes off of Amazon from the UK, but we haven't tried them yet.  Apparently they have 1 g of fat per cookies which isn't terrible...  Since Snackwell's stopped selling our favorite chocolate cookies, we are in desperate need of another chocolate treat.



We discovered some greek yogurt ice cream bars that everyone LOVES - and just 2 g fat per bar!

My future baking plans include a rolled cake for Easter, with either meringue or a fatless Genoise sponge.  When they say fatless, they mean there's no butter, oil, or cream - there are still eggs as a source of fat, but it's better than many cakes!  I'll let you know how it goes.