A Saucy Kind of Week

| Melia Alexander

It’s been icky out.  Icky as in liquid sunshine poured from the sky, and temperatures plummeted so that it seemed more like November than May.  Sigh.  And to think the temps were in the mid-80’s not that long ago.  Mother Nature’s a definite tease.  Or schizo. . ..

Trying to find a bright spot this last week, I decided to make a marinara sauce.  My version, not the kind I sometimes dump out of a jar (looks up at the ceiling and whistles with her fingers crossed behind her back).  I felt the Domestic Goddess rise up.  Why shouldn’t the family get something so fabulously made like my marinara sauce?  (Yes, my Domestic Goddess has a rather high opinion of herself!)

Of course, there is a process to making sauce in the Alexander household.

Step 1 – Find the recipe.  Normally, this would be easy.  I just have to look in my personally edited cookbook.  You know, it’s the one we all have.  It’s got loose pages and clipped magazine and newspaper recipes of things I might want to make.  Maybe yours might even have that one recipe for Grandma’s fudge that no one’s been able to find since she crossed over into Heaven’s Kitchen.  (Note to self: where is that recipe, anyway?)

Step 2 – Scratch head.  Because, of course, that favorite recipe – the one I’d personally developed and refined over countless hours at the stove – has disappeared.

Step 3 – Search the computer files.  Only. . . what the heck did I name it?  I’m a writer.  Simply calling it Marinara Sauce is too boring.

Step 4 – Thank Niece.  She found it thirty minutes later stuffed behind other recipes in the clear plastic recipe holder on the counter – exactly where I’d left it from the last time I made “The World’s Greatest Pasta/All-Purpose Tomato Sauce EVER” — Sorry.  It’s that writer-thing. . ..

Step 5 – Assemble ingredients.  A few cans of this and that.  An onion that has parts that are still edible, minced garlic-in-a-jar, a few heaping tablespoons of red pepper flakes, and a crock pot — Because, heaven help me, standing at the stove stirring the sauce every ten minutes just isn’t happening!

Step 6 – It’s important to remember that opened tomato can edges are sharp.

‘Nuff said. . ..

Step 7 – I dumped everything into the crock pot, set it on low, and walked away.  P1140344Twelve hours later I congratulated myself on my brilliance because I had enough sauce to last through most of the summer.

Now all I have to do is remember it’s stuffed in the back of the freezer somewhere. . ..

And that, my friends, is how sauce is made in the Alexander household.  🙂

Meatballs, anyone?

-Melia

18 thoughts on “A Saucy Kind of Week”

  1. LOL, Melia. I’ve never thought to make Marinara and freeze it. I guess because there is always tomatoes or canned tomato year round. Hmmm. Not to mention my DH does all the cooking. 🙂

    However, we do make and freeze pesto every year because he makes it at the end of summer before all the fresh basil plants begin going to dormancy or refuse to put out good leaves anymore. Last year we made so much we still have 4 family servings left and summer is almost here. All I can say is too bad I have to eat more pesto. Yup, really, really sad.

  2. My version is a chocolate chip cookie recipe, perfected after many experiments (such a hardship!). I have it written on a half piece of paper. And I have to track it down every. single. time!

  3. Love it, Melia! Sounds delish, and I also do the recipe dance almost every time I want to make that “special something”. Thank goodness I don’t cook much anymore, or I’d be spending half my time on the treasure hunt, and half cooking. When would I find the time to eat? Ha ha ha. ~ Viola

  4. Your marinara sauce sounds delicious. It sounded so good I gave a passing thought to leaving my comfy position on the couch and searching out the ingredients to make my own. I really am very comfortable though, and that books is calling my name most insistently and…well… do I really want to make the effort right now? Maybe later…

    Great post 🙂

  5. Pesto — OMG. I think I have some of that somewhere in the freezer, too! Now I’m wondering which freezer, and where. *GROAN*

    I suppose it’s a lovely problem to have, huh?

    Happy eating,
    Melia
    P.S. You are SOOOOO lucky your DH cooks! 🙂

  9. Great way to warm up! Sure seems like we have another “November”-type day today. My poor hound refuses to leave her bed!

  12. That sounds so familiar! I remember when we remodeled back in 2007. I cleaned out the freezer and found stuff in the back from 1999. Seriously. Okay, seriously gross! That was what made me decide to get rid of the extra freezer. Of course, I had no idea back then that two of my nieces would be moving in to go to school. *Sigh* Sure wish I had it back now!

    So glad you stopped by, Barbara. Have a great week!

    -Melia

  13. XY just made spaghetti sauce from the last of last summer’s tomatoes. Must be something in the air! Oh yeah, the 45-degree air 🙂

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