Fast and easy tomato sauce

Like I said in my last mobile random post, we celebrated 6 weeks of vegetarian eating by me and pescetarian eating by Waldo with a pepperoni and half ham pizza at Round Table.  It was so good.  Eating vegetarian for me isn’t hard because I’ve never liked eating meat very much; I’d eat chicken at restaurants and turkey sandwich for lunch and bacon occasionally, but the one that kills me is pepperoni.  I live on pizza, it is pretty much my favorite thing ever, but I hardly want it with just cheese.  I have started to add minced garlic, red and green bell peppers on it and it’s getting back up to the top of my food list.  Eating vegetarian for Waldo is a little harder.  He loves meat.  So why would he do it?  For me and Lily mostly.  Because I don’t like eating meat, I have made Lily a vegetarian. Waldo has always backed me up on this, but he wouldn’t say no if one day I said we would give her meat.  Lil has never made any indication that she wants any of the meat that’s eaten around her.  Waldo still felt like a hypocrite eating meat when we didn’t feed it to Lily, so he’s trying vegetarianism out and I’m along for the ride.  Waldo has decided that he will still eat fish and if he’s at say a bar-b-q he can eat meat.  This worked into me getting a pepperoni pizza the other day, it was amazing.

To help make this new food lifestyle have a fighting chance I needed some new recipes.  I had been asking around and was recommended How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.I got it last week and love it.  It’s full of pretty useful general kitchen and food information and something like 2000 recipes.  Waldo and I made bet if I’d ever make any of the recipes.  So far I’ve made a pretty good vinaigrette and a really good fast and easy pasta sauce.

3 table spoons EVOO

1 24- to 32- oz can of whole tomatoes~drained and chopped

salt and pepper

1 medium onion chopped

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Heat the oil in a 10 or 12 inch skillet over medium-high heat.  When it’s hot add the onion.  Cook till soft about 3 minutes.  Add the tomatoes and the salt and pepper. Cook stirring occasionally for about 10 to 15 minutes till the tomatoes sort of burst and the sauce comes together.

Add Parmesan cheese and serve.

***

I added about 2 tsp of sherry vinegar ,some garlic powder and the liquid from the tomatoes.

When the sauce was done I put it all in a blender and pureed it.  Taste and season accordingly. I added a few tablespoons of the pasta cooking water.  It helped loosen the sauce up but added body or something fancy sounding.

This is a great base sauce.  It reminds me a lot of my pizza sauce (I’ll post that one day, you will thank me), but it was fast and easy.

Next time I’ll add more herbs.  And Garlic!

Sorry that there aren’t any pictures.  We were too busy eating it to remember to take any.

 

Comparison time again

I love comparing pictures of Lily from time to time. I haven’t done it in a while so I thought it was time.

Here’s Lily in July 2009. She was 7 months old.

7 months old

cutie

31 weeks old

What a cutie! Look at those expressions.

Here’s July 2010. She’s a year and 7 months here. We had been in California for just over a month. She still mostly signed, she only says a few words: Dada, Kitty and done done I think were just about it.

a Cambria park on the beach

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Now July 2011. She’s 2 years 7 months old. She has a limitless vocabulary, she has her own ideas about how things should be done and isn’t afraid to tell us about it.

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Beating the heat

Beating the heat

My silly monkey girl

Excuse me while I go get a box of tissues.  Time goes so fast.  You get so used to how your baby looks right at the moment that you don’t truly realize how much they have changed. This is one reason I love taking pictures so much, I always want to remember everything.

One of Lily’s most requested videos

Lily will ask me to see “viveeos” (videos) of herself almost daily.  I am happy to ablige.  Lily has her favorites and will go days wanting to watch it over and over and then we won’t see it again for a week and then it will be everyday. You just never know.  This is a video that she asks for often.  I think the second time we watched it she asked for by saying “I wanna watch the viveeo of Lily Bean swinging and Mama saying ‘look at the cute girl go'” I knew which video she was talking about because I don’t have a lot of her swinging when she was little, she didn’t care for it, but I wasn’t sure of what I said in the video and was so shocked when I played it and she got it right down to the last word.

Another trip to the zoo

Yes we went to the zoo again.  In fact it was less than a week after the last time.  What can I say, we love the zoo and are trying to get our moneys worth out of the annual membership.  This time we took my niece Olivia with us.  I was a little worried about having two toddlers at the zoo, but Waldo was there to help and they are both pretty well behaved.

We picked Livi up and headed out.

Heading to the Zoo 7-3-2011

Lily was a little specious.

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She got over it pretty quickly.

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Lily showed Livi some of her favorite things.

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We bought two little water spraying fans because we knew how hot it was from the last time we were there. The girls spent the first 45 minutes or so watering the zoo.

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Looking at the prairie dogs.

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He's suspicious.

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"What you looking at, foo?"

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Livi's watering the camel.

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You get the idea.  Lots of water being sprayed at the zoo, very little of it being used to cool anyone off.

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Livi's trying to get the llama to come to the fence so she could water him.

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How fricking sweet is this? They were watching the ant eater, but seriously who cares about the animal, look at those girls.

We tried something we hadn’t done before at the zoo. We went to the bird show. We were sure the girls would have a blast.

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Zoo 7-3-2011

They couldn’t have cared less.

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Waldo and I thought it was awesome!

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This guy wasn't part of the show, but he didn't want to be forgotten. He stood like this for probably 10 minutes. It was really cool.

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We walked through the petting zoo, but only Livi was interested. I think Lily was too tired to care. We stopped at the kangaroos right before the petting zoo and Lily laid down on the ground. When I asked her if she was ok, she told me “I’m very tired”. I wish I had gotten a picture of it.

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Next we hit up the rainforest hopping to get cooled off a bit.  We didn’t.

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A porcupine. They are uglier than I expected.

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On our way to the tiger Livi sat down to mess with her shoe. Lily thought it was a good idea.

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I did not.

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We stopped by the elephants on the way out.

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We were spent

Livi was asleep before we left the parking lot and Lily was asleep just before we got home. Thankfully they both survived the transfer to the house and stayed asleep for another hour or two.

Then we went swimming at my Aunt’s house.

We had a great day with both girls. They were so cute together and it is one of the biggest reasons that I’m sad that we are moving again (post coming soon). I’m trying to plan another trip to the zoo with Livi and her Mama before we go.

For those of you keeping score, we’ve been to the zoo 7 times this year. I think if we go once more we will have paid for our membership. I’m pretty happy about it.

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