I work from home and have alot more flexibility around my meals and prepping my meals. For the last four years, although I worked from home, the demands of back to back conference calls didn’t allow me to actually even have lunch or time to pee.
Now that I’m back in the freelance work from home schedule, my happiness level is much higher alongside better health. I have little luck with plants as they always die on me, but have been encouraged by my tomato plants, basil and now chilli plants. Of course, it’s idealistic to believe I could grow everything to eat in a high rise apartment, but I do what I can. And making your own tomato sauce is the best thing ever. It’s more fresh, more tasty and you control the flavours while making it.
Essentially, it’s all the ingredients that go into making a bouillon and I just modified it. The chef husband approves, so I guess it’s good enough!
Ingredients:
8-10 tomatoes
1 onion
6-8 cloves of garlic
3-4 celery sticks
1 carrot
300-400ml of water (depends some tomatoes more juicy than others so you’ll have more liquid)
Handful of basil
3 bay leaves
Salt, pepper and/or Knorr chicken powder
olive oil
Directions:
Add chopped onions, garlic, ginger to olive oil on the hot pan. Stir fry until fragrant then throw in the chopped celery, carrot, tomatoes and bay leaves.
Add salt and pepper to taste
Boil the 300ml of water and slowly add the water into the simmering pan. Add a teaspoon of Knorr if you like. I do because it makes it a little more tasty, giving it the umami.
Add the basil in last. Stir and leave to cool. I remove the tomato skins then, if you plan to strain and sieve the blended mixture then you can leave the skins in.
Blend the mixture.
I like the chunky bits in my sauce, so I remove the skin before blending and then bottle. If you like your sauce thicker, you can add the canned tomato paste. That should do the trick.
Bottles:
They are old glass bottles. I rinse them with boiling water, then coat the insides with olive oil before putting the sauce in.
Typically the sauce is used in a week or so in the fridge. If you’re making a large batch, then freeze the rest.
