One of these days I’ll get around to sharing my family’s recipe for marinara. This is for love and pasta in the time of COVID-19, and you can make this recipe totally with cans and pantry items! Keep it on hand for when you want pasta sauce that tastes fresh and you can’t find tomatoes anywhere.
Hey, y’all! Happy Monday. Happy-ish? Sort of?
Things are not normal. I haven’t a clue when they will be again {but systems do tend to snap back to equilibrium, so I’m crossing my fingers that normalcy will return}. But in the meantime, we’re still chugging along, one day at a time.
Scott and I joke that we’re trained for this. We have enough deployments between us that we know you can only really take it one day at a time. You set your goals, you move the marker a little bit, and then you give yourself a break and get back to it again tomorrow.
We’re lucky enough to have jobs that we can do just as well from the house as we can do in our office settings, so we teleworked the whole past week. I’m a little surprised at how much we got done – although we each got about two hours back in our day from not commuting, so there’s that! And instead of walking to the coffee shop for a break, I hit our coffee machine, did the dishes, started a load of laundry, and any number of other things.
I spent some wonderful time teaching my little son to garden. We filled up our planters with fresh compost and mulch and started seedlings that we’ll plant later. He’s also enjoying using his learning tower in the kitchen, and he’s helped me mix cookies and pancakes very happily.
We’ve been lucky. And we’re trying to figure out ways to help those who have been more harshly impacted. I’ve been on the side needing help before and I know it’s not easy asking for or accepting help. But having been there, and now being in the position where I can provide some help, I’m reaching out to friends who need it as much as I can.
And so this little recipe is an offering to you all. I’d love to be able to cook for you all. But with social distancing, the best I can do is provide you with a really easy recipe for our favorite marinara sauce – with a twist. This version comes all from cans and pantry items.
The last time I was at the store, folks had raided the pasta and pasta sauce, so we’ve been making our own from cans, which we’ve been able to source pretty easily. And it turns out that they make a tastier sauce than the brand we usually buy.
Try it for yourself, and let me know what you think! I’ll also be sharing a recipe to pair this with later this week. Enjoy!
[lt_recipe name=”Marinara Sauce” summary=”We love our fresh tomato sauce, but this version made entirely from cans and pantry items is pretty awesome! Enjoy this classic sauce – with a social distance twist.” total_time=”20M” print=”yes” image=”https://homefrontcooking.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Chicken-Parm-Marinara-0352-1024×683.jpg” ingredients=”2-14 oz cans diced tomatoes;1 tsp minced garlic;1 tbsp canned tomato paste;1/4 tsp salt;1/4 tsp pepper;1 tsp basil;1 tbsp olive oil” ]Place all ingredients minus the olive oil in a food processor or blender and process until smooth.;Heat a large skillet over medium-low heat. Heat the olive oil in the skillet until it shimmers. ;Pour the tomato mixture into the skillet and let cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has thickened nicely, about 15-20 minutes.;Let cool as desired and serve.[/lt_recipe]
This sauce is great for pretty much any kind of pasta dish, and we also love to put a little bit of it as a base layer on our bruschetta for some added flavor!
Here’s wishing you all the best this week! Stay safe!
