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I'm good at cooking. That's my thing. So I thought I might be able to contribute to RJ by offering a recipe I use to up my intake of healthy things, ala vegetables.

This sauce is fairly low in refined carbs and fat and is great on pasta, chicken, spread on wraps, as a "red sauce", baked in ramekins with eggs on top....

I've found you can 'hide' a fair amount of stuff like spinach in here also, without effecting the taste.


Tomato Sauce
2 tins diced or crushed tomatoes (OR 1 kg fresh, diced)
4 cloves of garlic, smashed
2 onions, diced
2 carrots, finely diced
1/2 - 1 cup red wine

optional
Up to 2 celery stalks, finely diced
Up to 2 large parsnips, finely diced
Up to 2 large turnips, finely diced
Up to 10 leaves english spinach, cut into shreds
Up to 3 heads of bok choy, cut into shreds
Up to 1 whole head of wombok, cut into shreds
Up to 5 leaves of kale, cut into shreds

Pour a slug of olive oil into a medium saucepan on medium head, stir the onions, carrots, root vegetables and celery through.

When softened and smelling awesome (about 10min), dump in the garlic and boost the heat for a minute until fragrant.

Add the wine and scrape at the bottom of the pan, then add the tomato.

Bring to a boil, drop to a simmer and simmer uncovered until quite thick... You'll need to stir often. The ideal thickness is that of cake batter.

At this point, dump in any spinach, bok choy, wombok or kale. Simmer for 5 - 10 minutes until softened.

You can then, if a sweeter, caramelized flavor is desired, boost the heat a little and let stand for a minute or two, then stir, and repeat as the bottom starts to "stick". The stickier, the sweeter... Until burned, which isn't cool.

Blend with a stick blender until fairly smooth, then allow to cool and freeze in zip-loc bags of 1 cup.

I love having this stuff on a chicken breast schnitzel. The more of the optional veggies you add, the more danger of diluting the flavour... Usually 1 extra green, the celery and a root vegetable are safe to add, any more is up to you.

That sounds great. I'll give it a go. Thanks.

I like the idea of deliberately letting it stick to the bottom for flavour puposes. That usually happens to me because I get caught up in Deal or No Deal.

Sounds delicious. Thanks for the tip. I like to cook too.

I use a very similar recipe. The veges I usually add are garlic, onions, mushrooms, chopped zucchini and summer squash and green beans. For protein I heat Morningstar soy crumble in the microwave for three minutes and add to the simmer sauce. Other times I serve it with chicken, or shrimp or with ground bison meat over multi-grain pasta. It's also excellent over barley or brown rice.