Quick & Easy tomato sauce recipe

Thanks to everyone who entered my Chobani Champions Giveaway! The winner is...

#8 brandi said...
oh, and you're in my reader!

February 24, 2010 11:12 AM

Congrats Brandi!

(My next giveaway will be soon! You will all love it, I promise!)




My friend Charlene recently added me a paper bag full of fresh tomatoes from her garden. I was thrilled! I made pasta sauce with them, naturally.

(Excuse how messy my stove top is. Sauce bubbling makes quite a mess.)

Ingredients:

8 medium sized tomatoes, 4-5 small tomatoes quartered.
2 zucchini chopped up fine
half a brown onion diced
2 tbsp butter
salt to taste
dried garlic flakes
1 tbsp olive oil

I started by heating the EVOO (RR!) and the diced onion until the onion was clear. Then I added in the chopped zucchini and tomatoes and cooked them down for 30 minutes. The butter, salt, & garlic flakes (& 1 tbsp of Italian seasonings) were added last. I used my immersion blender to make the sauce creamy. I loved how it turned out orange!



Then I made a baked pasta dish using whole wheat pasta noodles, fontina cheese, my homemade sauce, chicken meatballs and parmesan cheese.



And heated up some garlic asiago bread.



And just heated until the cheese melted. (In the stove @350 for 5-6 mins)





DELICIOUS! I'm glad I tried making my own sauce. All of the recipes I found online took 2-4 hours and I just wasn't having it. The quick recipes used peeled & canned tomatoes which I obviously didn't have. So I got creative and just did my own thang. Turned out beautifully. Leftovers for lunch!

I'm not feeling so hot this am. I ended up running 1.5 miles yesterday with Andy and it irritated my knee. I knew I should have taken the day off but...I am dumb. I was up all night tossing & turning in pain as a result. I'm going to take today off running and start Week 7 of Couch to 5k tomorrow. Wish me luck!