Sauce and Vacation Adventures

Vacation is over and I have one week's worth of work under my belt.  As usual, I left for 10 days and returned to not know a good number of employees in one of my stores.  That's what happens when you have almost 200 direct reports who like to move around a lot, I guess.  Nametags are a very handy thing -- for the most part.  I have become accustomed to answering to 2 of my other co-worker's names because for some reason, they always mix us up.

My March vacation was great.  We got so much wedding planning done that it's almost insane.  We took 2 hours, sat down with our wedding planner and florist and got 75% of the wedding planned out!  Best of all -- lots of cake tasting!  I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but let's just say we're going to have 3 different types of cupcakes at our wedding.  And everyone is sure to love all of them.

We also took a few days and flew North to visit my family and go dress shopping with my Maid of Honor and one of my Bridesmaids.  While there, I had the opportunity to make a few of my favorite dishes as my family requested them.  Eggplant Parmesan, Chicken picatta, Raspberry shortbread cookies, chocolate chip snowball cookies and (a first) home made sauce!

I now have a good backlog of recipes to go through as I have a feeling I will be slacking the next couple of weeks as Easter and Spring Break come up.  Often, we are required to work 6 days one of the weeks and long hours the rest of the weeks.  I believe my 6 day week is the 2nd week of April.  And, when I'm working long hours and/or 6 days, I typically completely crash on my days off, doing nothing except exactly what is necessary.  Which may or may not include cooking...

Before I sign off for the night...I'm going to share the recipe for my new favorite sauce -- which I may or may not have used in both eggplant parmesan and chicken parmesan (because someone doesn't like eggplant...)

I don't always have a car available for use when I visit home, so I always request my ingredients be purchased ahead of time.  So, the sauce recipe was born out of necessity as I had requested 4 cans of sauce be at my disposal and I instead found myself with 4 cans of diced tomatoes!!  Well...no worries.  With the help of my dad's handy immersion blender, a pantry of spices and some cheese I was able to turn the diced tomatoes into a really good sauce.

First...dump the tomatoes into a sauce pan and season as desired.  I added Salt, Pepper, Italian Seasoning, Red Pepper, Garlic Powder, and Chili Powder.

 Once the flavors have had a chance to mingle and the tomatoes are heated, pull out your immersion blender and blend it together to the desired consistency.

Heat the sauce back up again and add some shredded Parmesan-Romano Cheese.

 Let it melt into the sauce, stirring occasionally.  Serve the sauce as desired!

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients:
4 cans diced tomatoes
Salt
Pepper
Italian Seasoning
Red Pepper
Garlic Powder
Chili Powder
Other seasonings as desired.
3/4 shredded Parmesan-Romano Cheese

Directions:
Add diced tomatoes to an empty sauce pan and heat over medium heat.
While heating, add seasonings as desired.
Once spices have been incorporated to tomatoes, remove from heat.
Blend with an immersion blender to desired consistency.
Replace on heat.  Add cheese and stir occasionally.
When cheese has melted and sauce is the desired temperature incorporate into another recipe as desired.

Until next time!