Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Easy pasta sauce

Every year I have a vegetable garden with all kinds of veggies and fruits. This year, however, my vegetable garden is non-existent, because that's where all the old bricks and roof tiles have been thrown. It's literally a junk yard!
People know that I like to grow vegetables, however, and sometimes they give me plants. I can't throw away a plant so when I received two tomato plants and a zucchini plant, I went ahead and planted them behind the trailer.
When we came back from our two-week vacation, three zucchinis and a bunch of tomatoes were ripe. It's hard to keep them well in the trailer, because it gets pretty hot in here. On a sunny day 32 C (90F) is not uncommon. That's why I decided to freeze them to have easy pasta sauce in the freezer.

Inspired by the Pioneer Woman, here's the cast of characters:

Olive oil, three bell peppers, three onions, three cloves of garlic, three zucchinis and a bunch of tomatoes. There's also wheat macaroni in the picture but I didn't need that until later, when I actually converted the veggies into pasta sauce.

First, I cut the onions and garlic in little pieces, and started sautéeing them in the olive oil. Because I'm not the Pioneer Woman, I don't have a picture of that.

When the onions were almost transparent, I added the cut up bell peppers. I like to use three different colors, because it makes my dish look happy.

After they were softened a little, I added the zucchini pieces.

The tomatoes were next. After I had added them, I turned the fire down and let everything simmer for a while, stirring it occasionally. After about ten minutes, everything was nice and softened and there was a little layer of juice in the pot. I then grabbed my handmixer and blended everything. Not so smoothly that it looked like baby food, but smooth enough so it was a sauce with still something to chew.

Depending on the zucchini:tomato ratio this sauce usually turns out anywhere between a green -orange - red color. Two kgs of vegetables made four 2-person servings. We ate one and froze three.
I added some ground beef and italian spices, and voila! Easy pasta!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love her website. Those veggies look really good!