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Today, the 26th, my scratch challenge fell by the wayside. I’m kind of bummed, having made it this far without venturing into my pantry of prepared items. However, we had a Minor Wood Catastrophe that took precedence because heat for a month is more important than arbitrarily sticking to a date.
Anyway, much of the meal was yummy scratch food –
I made some really nice whole wheat dinner rolls. Okay, they weren’t aesthetically lovely but very tasty and made from delicious, wholesome ingredients. After this month I don’t think I can ever choke down store bought bread again!
I let my dough rise while I played outside with the dog.
The serious yumminess was the pasta sauce. It’s a family tradition to have spaghetti on the day of the first snow of the year. The reason for this is that my best friend, who taught me to can marinara sauce, told me that you should always wait until the first snowfall to open one of the jars, in order to give the flavors time to develop.
I’m going to teach you to make a delicious, from-scratch Snowfall Spaghetti Sauce – this can be made in bigger batches and canned as well. (Be sure to use the pressure canner if you intend to preserve the sauce with meat in it!) Because I was sick during tomato season, I wasn’t able to make my own sauce from fresh tomatoes this year so I’ve just been throwing it together each time we have spaghetti.
Snowfall Spaghetti Sauce
Ingredients:
1 can of crushed tomatoes
3 cloves of garlic
1 medium onion
1/4 cup of dehydrated mushrooms or 1/2 cup of fresh sliced mushrooms
2 tbsp of dehydrated red bell peppers
1 tbsp of raw sugar
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of thyme
1 tsp of oregano
1 tbsp of basil
black pepper to taste
1 pinch of paprika (smoked Hungarian if you can find it)
2 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
Directions:
1. In a food processor, place a small amount of the crushed tomatoes, garlic, onion, spices and bell peppers. Process until pureed.
2. Pour the rest of the crushed tomatoes, the pureed mixture and the mushrooms into a saucepan.
If you want to add meat, stir in your uncooked ground meat or meatballs now too.
3. Simmer on a low heat for about 3 hours. (You can cook it for longer if you want to, or you can cook this all day on low in the crock pot.) Drizzle with olive oil and allow it to cook for another 15 minutes.
4.) Serve over pasta, topped with Parmesan and parsley.
This is the point at which the Scratch Challenge went awry. I had the sauce simmering away on the stove, the bread rising, and ingredients out on the table for homemade pasta. After hauling frozen wood into the kitchen for an hour and a half, I said, “Forget it!” and used pasta out of the box. *hangs head in shame* In my defense, I made it 26 days!
Dinner, completely scratch or not, was darned good on a cold snowy day!
