Saturday Sauce Day

Good morning!

Since I never got around to putting my favorite sauce into this blog, here it is. This is the all purpose tomato sauce that I like for anything wanting a slightly Spanish flavor.

Tomato Sauce for Huevos Rancheros

2 T. olive oil--heated to a low temperature

1 small or half a larger onion, braised slowly in the olive oil

1 green pepper if you like it

2 cans (8-oz size) "tomato sauce" a la Hunt's or Del Monte

"Tomato sauce" has the flavor of peppers in it, and onions too, as opposed to "Tomato Paste" which is pure tomato.

Simmer until the onion is soft, add salt and pepper, and pour over the eggs.  This is also a good all purpose tomato sauce for vegetables or meat.

If you like, do add a small jar of pimentoes chopped up, or a "roasted pepper" from a jar...this gives a depth and richness to the flavor.  The important thing to me in this simple sauce is to have the onions soft and well cooked.

Mexican addendum:  a knife tip of Gebhardts chile powder adds a lot of flavor, including that of cumin, which is already in Gebhardts...I like it.  I love cumin but the flavor is really quite different when it's in things so decide how you like your eggs for yourself!!

Then, a few years ago I went on an anti-catsup campaign when I realized that our modern day catsup is mostly corn syrup, it seems to me.  Very sweet and with that gooey texture.  So I went to dear old Fannie Farmer, to her canning pages, and looked up the recipe for canned catsup.  I do not want to make pecks'-worth of anything right now, so I just got the tips from the recipe to make:

Tomato Sauce with a Catsup Taste

2 cans tomato sauce

Now, she makes a boiling bag with all sorts of whole spices in it, including black peppercorns, sticks of cinnamon, whole cloves and goodness knows what else.

But I am not going to make a boiling bag, not on your life--just put in a few spices to see how closely I can approximate that pleasant catsup taste a little more healthily that the red bottle does. So, let's try (keeping in mind that you  have about 2 cups of sauce up there...)

I knife-tip ground allspice
1 knife-tip ground cinnamon
1 knife-tip ground cloves
 a few celery seeds
 a good grind from the pepper grinder
(my knife-tips are about 1/4 teaspoon by the way)
dash of cayenne pepper

{1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar OR artificial sugar sub. whch wont be as tasty }

OK, that bit in the fancy parentheses is the tricky part.  You may want twice as much of each, or you may want less. This is where it's up to you.  Simmer gently (I'd add a little water so as not to over thicken it at first) and put in your salt with all that, and taste, taste, taste. I think you will like it especially if you use brown sugar. You may have to add a little here or there to get the taste right. In pickles, as in so much else, the exact balance to your taste of salt, sugar and vinegar is essential.  So the same, in catsup or sweet-and-sour sauces.

If you are on a low carb diet, this is one way you can have catsup, by using a sugar substitute.   Just don't use aspartame, ever. It is bad for us (just look on the web). I have my suspicions about sucralose too (CHLORINE?)...so I use saccharine. Am beginning to use Stevia, also, in the form of Truvia--am not sure I can taste it!!! But it is worth trying.

I probably didn't show you anything you didnt already know or do better than I do today, but it's fun to make sauces and they add a lot to food.  My husband will enjoy a sauce, but commercially he is a dud. He eats NO MUSTARD, NO CATSUP, NO MAYO, NO MIRACLE WHIP, NO PICKLES, NO JELLY, NO JAM (the latter two being two of my favorite things--well, I like them all.)NO SALT, NO PEPPER, NO SUGAR...  And that's just in the condiment department....You can tell on the grocery bill who's adding to all the cost of our meals. I've decided that I can make my own instant pickles with cucumbers, my own mayonnaise certainly, and my own jam with fresh fruit leftovers. Then nobody can point the finger on the Von's bill and I will be using my skills to everyone's benefit!!! YAZZYBEL