Essential to my pantry are cans of whole, peeled, San Marzano tomatoes. Whenever I hit up The Fancy Grocery Store, I stock up. To me, San Marzanos are the only tomatoes to use for simple tomato sauces where you want sweet tomato-y flavor to shine, and you don't have fresh ones on hand.

My marinara recipe is quick and simple, but once you've made a batch, you don't have to just serve it over spaghetti. Perhaps use this an opportunity to clean out both the pantry and the fridge.  Here are some of my favorite things to do with marinara:

• Use it as a base for seafood stew. Simmer it along with a little more wine or Pernod and orange zest. Then add shellfish, chunks of firm white fish, and prawns. Garnish with flat parsley.
• Use it to top grilled, flattened chicken breasts, then cover with thin slices of fontina val d'aosta, pop under broiler to melt cheese.
• Saute cannelini beans in garlic and olive oil. Add in several spoons of marinara and some chopped, fresh rosemary, for a quick side dish.
• Add it to beef stew instead of canned tomatoes.
• Use it as a pizza sauce or layer it into lasagne or eggplant parmigiana.
• Spoon it over soft, scrambled eggs and top with shredded basil.

Additionally, to the marinara itself you can add all kinds of things before tossing with pasta: halved, oil-cured black olives; orange juice and zest; flaked imported tuna packed in oil; chiffonade of basil; fresh parsley.

Almost anything goes!

I thought I could do better than the Hillbilly Housewife, whose weekly menu of weiner stirfry and tuna-and-peas-over-rice didn't appeal much to my sense of budgetary gourmet. I'm not the only one, evidently. The good people at the Better Times Almanac have created what they call the "Slow Food for Poor People Challenge."

Taking the "Food Stamp Challenge," they ate on a food stamp budget for a week (about $61 for two people) and tried to make their example an even better one by employing "(1) frugal supermarket shopping, (2) preparing meals from basic ingredients, (3) buying local foods, (4) gardening, (5) food storage, and (6) home preservation of food."

Menus like "Buffalo meatloaf, oven fries, corn on the cob, green beans," biscuits and gravy, buffalo pot roast and a breakfast of "2 scrambled eggs, 1/3 lb sausage, hash brown, potatoes, rolls, apple cobbler" are a little more my speed. The drawback is that their menu is a bit repetitive (and, being from Oklahoma, relies heavily on buffalo meat). But you can hardly argue with a $60 weekly menu that employs organic eggs from free-ranging hens and meats from local cooperatives. It's a nice attempt and only fuels my desire to come up with more and better cheap-but-gourmet meals.

[photo Sarah Gilbert]