"tomato sauce" news and stories

Fresh, homemade tomato sauce usually doesn't get the "quick and easy" label. There's peeling, de-seeding, reducing... It's the sort of thing that's well worth the effort, but not always feasible. Or at least, it didn't seem so until now.

This week, Pim has shared a 15-Minute Tomato Sauce recipe that looks super tasty and requires minimal effort and time. It's so quick that even if the steps take longer, it's still not a big investment of your in-demand minutes. This is basically an easy blanch, peel, squeeze, and saute process that results in a fresh-tasting, pulpy tomato sauce that can be whipped up as your dried pasta boils.

Yum.

I've been cutting down on carbs lately and looking for an excuse to have a big plate of spaghetti topped with sauce and grated parmesan cheese. Hello National Pasta Day!

I could spend the entire day just doing posts for pasta, it's such a versatile food, but I can't do that. Instead, here are several pasta recipes from various sites, including Epicurious, AllRecipes, RecipeZaar, Food Network, The Reluctant Gourmet and The National Pasta Association.

And don't forget the sauce! Here are several recipes from About.com and this one from MealsMatter.org for Southwestern Pasta Sauce.

When I got home from class on Wednesday night, I wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge. I stood there for a moment, staring blankly at the contents, half hoping that there wouldn't be anything inside so that I could just pour a bowl of cereal and plop down on the couch. Instead, there was a bowl of aging tomatoes that demanded to be cooked.

I had bought them over the weekend at my local produce market on clearance, six big tomatoes for $.99. So they were already starting to show signs of wilt when I brought them into the apartment, and 4+ days in the fridge hadn't helped measures much. I brought them out onto the counter, along with a large pan, half an onion and a few cloves of garlic. I got the onion and garlic chopped and simmering in a little olive oil over low heat and turned my attention to the tomatoes.

For those of you not familiar with this Portuguese sausage, it's pronounced Ling-GWEES-a. I was waiting tables in a pizza place about 20 years ago and a tourist asked me what this "Linguicka" was.

It's fantastic in sandwiches and on pizza, but you can also make chili with it. One of the best bowls of chili I've ever had was made with linguica instead of beef. It gives the chili a really nice, different flavor, while remaining hearty. I don't know how this place made it, the exact recipe. I'm sure I could call them up right now and say "hey, give me your recipe," but I don't want to do that, even though they probably remember me coming in there.

According to an old episode of M*A*S*H, smell is one of the biggest triggers of memory that we have. And food smells can take us back to special moments in our lives. Of course, sometimes food just "smells good" and we like it, with nothing deeper attached to it. Here are my 8 favorite food smells. What are yours?

1. Chocolate chip cookies: Mmmmmmm...I would assume that this is on almost everyone's list. Unless you don't like chocolate, which means it would be hard for me to talk to you. Also includes other types of chocolate and hot cocoa.