New Year's Resolution or Planned Failure?

Some people are wise and give up New Year's resolutions. My husband is one of those people. He convinced me that they were silly, and I gave them up as well. Then two years ago, after eighteen years of marriage, my husband announces that he has a New Year's resolution. Well, la-di-da. His resolution? To play poker once a month. Well, isn't that interesting? Then last year the resolution was to play twice a month, once in a home game and once at the casino. Well, what's a girl to do, especially a girl with her own vices, namely scrapbooking and cooking.

This year, I embraced my husband's new world order, and set a resolution for myself. My resolution was to prepare one meal a month using my cookbooks. Now, I'm not saying that I don't try out new recipes. Oh goodness, do I try out new recipes! But I have taken to getting those recipes from the internet. Yes, a simple search can give you so many great ideas. And you can spend hours salivating over new combinations and twists. I know, I have. In the process, my poor cookbook collection has been ignored. And my cookbook collection is by no means small. I have a full size book case of just cookbooks. I am not lacking in any way. It's not as if I have only one or two, so the internet ensures I have more choices. No, I have plenty. I just got lazy. The bookcase is in the basement. The laptop is in the kitchen. Nuff said.

January started out lovely. I pulled out an Omaha Steak cookbook and prepared Swedish Meatballs, something I was sure the whole family would love. I do have to remember the audience. They weren't loved. Kids wouldn't touch them. Yes, the kids who love bleu cheese wouldn't touch meatballs. Go figure. Then work got busy, and you guessed it, the planned February and March meals were ignored. So now we're into May, and I decided, it's time to work on that resolution. Ok, so it was broken, no reason I can't try again, right?

Today I received my bi-weekly basket of produce from Full Circle Farm and it included a pound of roma tomatoes and a pound of Italian link sausage from Heritage Meats. The answer seemed clear to me, make some tomato sauce and have Italian for dinner, and I announced that after dinner this evening. Then, at 9 PM I remembered I have a meeting at 4:30 tomorrow at my son's school. So cooking sauce after picking up the kids from school isn't an option. So you guessed it, at 9PM, I started a batch of tomato sauce. Yes, I'm that kind of crazy. And rather than hit the intertubes looking for a recipe, I trekked to the basement in search of a sauce recipe. There was my trusty Pasta cookbook, and the game was on!


There were a number of simple tomato sauce recipes. Some used canned tomato. One used fresh tomatos. I decided that I would just go ahead and substitute the fresh for the canned. Then I noticed, hey, I have a 1/2 cup of Pinot Noir just sitting here doing nothing, and yea, the recipe calls for dry white, but I used dry white the last time I made fresh tomato sauce, so let's be crazy and give it a shot. So if you own this cookbook, I combined the Zesty Tomato Sauce and the Fresh Tomato sauce to make this recipe.

9 PM Crazy Woman Tomato Sauce

2 T olive oil
1 chopped onion
4 cubes frozen garlic (many thanks to Trader Joe's! - you can use 4 minced cloves as well)
1/2 c Pinot Noir
1 pound roma tomatos peeled, seeded, and chopped
1/4 c sweet vermouth

In a frying pan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onions and cook until softened, about 5 minutes, stirring occassionally. Add in the garlic and cook another minute.

Add the pinot noir and bring up to a simmer. Add the tomatos.  Return to a low simmer. Simmer for 90 minutes

Puree the tomatos with an immersion blender or regular blender.

Return to pan using a small bit of water to get it all from the blender if needed. Add 1/4 cup sweet vermouth and salt/pepper to taste. Heat for another 5 minutes and serve, or in my case, cool and put in the fridge for a quick reheat tomorrow night!