Simple Tomato Sauce

This, for me, is The Sauce. It's surprisingly cheap. It's elegantly simple. It's incredibly tasty. It requires only slightly more effort than opening a jar. You'll never want to pour Ragu on your spaghetti again.

This is a recipe which has made its rounds on cooking blogs. I first saw it on Smitten Kitchen. It apparently originates here, in a book which is near the top of my wish list.

Anyway, the sauce. The Sauce. There are three ingredients in the original recipe: tomatoes, onion and butter. Yes, that's it. No pinch of sugar or cinnamon, no dribble of red wine, none of that. If you're me, and you're bad, you assault The Sauce with a couple cloves of garlic. This here is the way I make it (garlic; doubled; with residual onion bits) - that Smitten Kitchen post has the original, unadulterated recipe.

You need:

2 28oz cans whole peeled tomatoes (Any brand will work, but San Marzano are especially good. You do have to search a bit for them.)

10 T butter (I usually have salted on hand, so that's what I use. If you use unsalted, you'll probably want to have some salt nearby.)

2 medium yellow onions, peeled and halved

3 cloves garlic, minced

Put everything in your biggest saucepan. Bring it to a simmer, then drop the heat, keeping it at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes. Stir it every now and then, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot. The original recipe tells you to remove and discard the onion - me, I like the onion, and it's usually started to disintegrate by that point anyway, so I remove only the biggest, most solid chunks - and then I crush some of those up with a fork and put them back in.

That's it. For me, this makes enough sauce for a pound of noodles, and I always make that much because the leftovers are fantastic.

Grandma's Old-fashioned Oatmeal Cookies

This is the best oatmeal cookie recipe ever! It's a very old recipe, though to look at the list of ingredients it seems like just about any other oatmeal cookie recipe. The secret to their special deliciousness is the trick of soaking the raisins in the egg and vanilla for an hour. One day when I was in a hurry, I omitted that step and the end result was not as good. So, trust me on this one.

1 cup raisins
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup shortening
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 cups oatmeal
1/2 to 1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Beat the 3 eggs in a smallish bowl with the vanilla; add raisins. Let this set for one hour. (you don't need to refrigerate it.) Next, cream the shortening and the two sugars together, add to egg mixture. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon; add to creamed mixture and mix well. Stir in oatmeal and nuts. Now, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Scoop up dough by heaping teaspoons and form into balls. Roll in additional white sugar. Place on cookie sheet. Dip the bottom of a small glass in sugar and flatten each cookie. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. Don't overbake! Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. Great warm or cold.

Puppy Chow

Puppy chow! Was not already on the blog! How weird is that? Really weird. This is a holiday staple, you guys. We cannot have Christmas without puppy chow. And that's the only time we ever make it , which is also really weird. Puppy chow is an all-occasion wonder snack.

Ingredients:

• 6 oz (and by six I mean seven or eight) milk chocolate chips
• 6 oz (ditto) semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 box Crispix cereal
• 4 cups powdered sugar

Melt together everything meltable. Pour over Crispix. Toss to coat. This is the only hard part of the recipe. Because if you actually toss it, I'm pretty sure you'll end up with a mess. And if you stir it with a giant spoon, you'll crush all the cereal. But that's okay. Crushed puppy chow is good too. When it's all nicely coated, dump it into a large paper bag (or a large tupperware bowl with a lid), add the powdered sugar, and shake shake shake. This is the totally fun part.

Now you should try to let it cool before eating. This is the other hard part. Then you should eat it.

This is the other totally fun part.

Makes enough for one or two really big Christmas parties.

"Southwestern" Hash

This really shouldn't be called a recipe, but I make it (or some variant of it) often enough it's worth mentioning.

1/2 pound sliced mushrooms

1/4 medium onion, sliced

1 bag of Simply Potatoes "Southwestern" hash browns (You could certainly improvise another shredded potato product. I've never used frozen potatoes, but you could probably make it work. You could also, if you're that sort of person, shred your own potatoes, in which case you'd need 4.5 C, plus some chopped peppers.)

about 4 oz cheese (I like swiss), shredded

5-6 slices soy bacon, cooked and crumbled (Or real bacon, if you prefer pork products.)

4 eggs

2 T spicy brown mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

Butter and olive oil for cooking

Heat about 1 T of butter and 1 T of olive oil in a big skillet. Add the sliced mushrooms and onions, and cook until the mushrooms start to brown. Then, add a bit more oil and dump in the potatoes. Stir it all together, then let it rest a minute or so before stirring again. (Do this repeatedly - you don't want actual hashbrowns, so you want to stir, but you don't want to stir too often or things don't brown well.)

While the potatoes cook, combine the eggs, mustard, shredded cheese and bacon in a bowl. Whisk everything together until well combined and slightly foamy (like you're making an omelete).

When the potato shreds are done (meaning they no longer have the taste/texture of raw potato), pour the egg mixture into the skillet and stir, stir, stir! The egg and melted cheese binds everything together. It's ready when you no longer see raw egg. Serve as you see fit - sour cream, salsa, extra cheese, etc.