Marinara Sauce

My go-to recipe for meatless spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, and eggplant parmesan with ingredients I always have on-hand.

Marinara Sauce

Makes 1 3/4 cups

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (8oz) tomato sauce
1 can (14oz) crushed tomatoes
1 tsp white sugar
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp salt

Directions:
In medium saucepan, heat oil over med. heat. Add garlic; cook, stirring 1 min.
Stir in tomato sauce, crushed tomatoes, sugar, oregano, basil, and salt. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer with lid ajar for 30 min, stirring occasionally. Season with more herbs to taste, if desired.

*I have used cans of whole tomatoes and diced tomatoes. As the sauce simmers I just used a potato masher to stir and crush up the tomatoes while they're really soft.

Aunt Olive's Soup

I brought this to Souper Saturday yesterday.  Aunt Olive was my Grandma's older sister.  So this recipe has made it through several generations of my family.  The way this recipe was handed down to me was that you make huge batches and bottle them.  A few years ago I experimented with it and made the recipe smaller so you could just make 1 dinner.  I will include both recipes.  It has basically the same ingredients as salsa...so you can grow the same items in your garden.  Sister Dabb has a really similar recipe (the larger canning version), but she does not put the noodles in before canning.  There are advantages to this...you could then use rice or noodles and the noodles don't take up space in your jars.  But the advantage to having the noodles already in the soup are that it makes it easier to open up and have a quick dinner.  I have listed spicy sausage to add...but you could alternately add ground beef or ground turkey or shredded or cubed chicken.  It is also good without meat.  We were brainstorming yesterday and saying it would be good with beans in it also...but I have never tried that.  Please note that the  bottling methods listed have not been approved by the Utah State Extension Office...they are just what my family has always done.

This is the bottling recipe...

1/2 bushel tomatoes

1/4 C. salt

1 C. sugar

1 tsp. pepper

9 C. macaroni (cooked and drained)

3 large bell peppers, diced

1 bunch celery, diced

5 medium onions, diced

1/2 lb. of real butter

Melt butter in large frying pan add vegetables.  Saute until light brown and fully cooked.

Peel tomatoes (can blanch if desired).  Cut into small pieces or blend in blender.

Fully cook macaroni (do not overcook).

Combine all ingredients except macaroni and boil hard for 15 minutes.  Add hot (and drained) macaroni).

Put in bottles.  Process in water bath.  Pints 20 minutes, Quarts 25 minutes.

Makes about 35 pints.

When serving, if desired, you can add any of the following: sausage, hamburger, chicken, cheese.  I also think it is too thick when I open a jar so I will blend a bottle of tomatoes and add that in.

Here is the 1 dinner recipe...

10 tomatoes peeled and blended in blender, OR 2 quarts of bottled tomatoes (with a possibility of 3 total).  If you do fresh tomatoes you may want to have 1 jar of bottled tomatoes on hand just in case it is too thick.

1 T. salt

3 T. sugar

quite a bit of pepper

2 1/2 C. macaroni (or other noodles), cooked and drained

1 bell pepper, any color

2 ribs celery, diced

1 medium yellow onion diced

2 T. oil or butter  (add more if vegetables start to stick while sauteing)

1 tube Jimmy Dean Hot Sausage (by the hot dogs)

1.  To peel the tomatoes you cna blanch them first to make it easier.

2.  Saute vegetables until lightly browned and cooked through.  

3.  Brown meat, drain if desired (I did not for Souper Saturday...but sometimes I do).

4.  Cook noodles through and drain

5.  Combine all ingredients

6.  Boil hard 15 minutes

7.  If not soupy enough when done, add blended up jar of bottled tomatoes.  And heat through.

Instead of the hot sausage you can do hamburger or chicken if desired.  And instead of noodles you can do cooked rice if desired.

If you double this recipe it will completely fill a large crockpot.

Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce

Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce
By BlendTec

2 lbs tomatoes, quartered
1 md onion, roughly chopped
8 cloves garlic
3 T olive oil
2 T fresh oregano
1 tsp kosher salt

Preheat oven to 375 and toss all ingredients in 9x13 glass baking dish. Roast for 1 hour. Remove pan from oven, cool slightly and transfer all ingredients to jar and secure lid. Select "Sauces". Serve or store and refrigerate.

This was the original recipe, but I didn't have all of the ingredients or the time. This is what i did instead and my family loved it.

3-14.5 oz cans Kroger brand stewed tomatoes (with onions, celery, peppers)
1md onion diced
2 T+1tsp garlic salt
3 T olive oil
2 T+1tsp Italian seasoning
2 yellow squash, quartered
1tsp black pepper
1 lb re-hydrated freeze dried chicken

Blend tomatoes 2 T garlic salt, olive oil, 2 T Italian seasoning. In a large pot, simmer sauce for 20 minutes or so.  Saute onion and yellow squash in 1 T oil with 1 tsp garlic salt, 1 tsp Italian seasoning, and black pepper. Add onion mixture and chicken. Cook for 10 more minutes and serve over pasta.

Pasta Bolognese

From Jennica R...


Here is that recipe my husband loves. I do agree it is super yummy. Not the cheapest recipe i've ever made due to the Gouda cheese, but the gouda cheese is a must in this recipe, I buy the big wedge of gouda at costco and I can usually use it in 4 to 5 different meals. Here is the original recipe

2Tbsp olive oil
1Tbsp butter
1 tsp dried basil
Dash crushed red chili pepper
3 medium onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
dash of salt
3 - 29 oz cans tomato sauce
7 oz Gouda cheese, grated
1 pint heavy cream

In olive oil and butter saute basil, chili pepper, onlion, garlic, and salt until onion is tender. Add tomato sauce and cook until flavors combine (at least 20 minutes, but the longer the better). Add Gouda cheese and stir until melted. Add heavy cream and remove from heat (cream should not be cooked). Serve over pasta.

*This is the original recipe, when I made it I changed it up a bit and our family liked it a lot. I only used 2 onions. and i replaced the heavy cream with half a pint of half and half so it wasn't so rich. I added italian sausage for meat. 
Enjoy!