Alternative to traditional spaghetti/tomato sauce?

southpaw211

I've been hesitating on adding pasta back into the weekly rotation, but decided that if I'm going to be eating better all the way around, I should do it realistically. When you have kids and a busy schedule, a quick spaghetti supper is a lifesaver during the week.

I do buy whole grain pasta and stay within the recommended serving size. I stay away from jar sauce and usually will buy natural tomato sauce, then add fresh herbs and garlic to it. I went to pre-log it and was shocked to see the sodium content in a half a cup of plain old tomato sauce. I know it's available somewhere in a box and not canned, but not where I live, unfortunately.

So I'd like to ditch the canned tomato sauce and offer up a healthy alternative to toss with the pasta. I don't have time to make a sauce from fresh tomatoes - we don't get home until 5:00 and then hubby and I go for our quick run while the girls are finishing up homework. So I've got to come up with something quick.

I'm thinking about chopping up some roma tomatoes and sauteeing them in a little olive oil and garlic to toss with the pasta. I've also prelogged a basic chef salad and some steamed broccoli for the meal, but I'd appreciate any ideas that anyone else uses for pasta other than red sauce.

squiggyflop

Deseed skinless canned tomatoes with thumbs. Shove in blender with olive oil, basil, oregano, garlic,and some chives (or onion). Press the little pulse button a few times until its a chunky sauce like consistency. Either microwave or better yet use the stove to heat it up. Add salt and or cheese to hot sauce. Enjoy. Prep time 5 minutes, cook time varies based on how much you make. A full gallon of sauce takes 20 minutes, while making just enough to coat a pound of pasta takes 10 minutes tops. If you use fresh tomatoes, deseed them and run them through the blender for as long as it takes to make a paste so you dont have to deal with skin pieces. For creamy sauce add a wedge of laughing cow cheese.

Also, I always find it strange how other families eat so early in the evening. We always eat after 8pm, and generally closer to 10pm.

southpaw211

Thanks - that is a great idea! I never even thought about the blender for breaking down tomatoes. Perfect solution.

We shoot for 6:30 for dinner but usually it ends up being 7:00 or later. We have to eat that early because we have a 6 and 8 year old that need to be in bed by 8:00. Otherwise, I doubt we'd even eat a proper meal every night - we never used to before kids. It would be more like running errands throughout the evening around the house and having scrambled eggs and toast at 9:00!

neanderthin

Cherry tomatoes or similar sauteed in evoo with some onion, herbs and garlic.......5 minutes, done.

bcattoes

Does your grocery not have no salt added tomatoes or reduced sodium pasta sauces? Since tomato sauce is also high in potassium the sodium content is not really a big problem. Plus if you add no additional salt to the sauce or pasta the sodium per serviing may not be all that high.

But, mushroom sauce or pesto are a good alternatives. Or you could make a light cream sauce full of chopped veggies (and chicken or shrimp if desired) with reduced/lower fat cheese and fat free greek yogurt.

savithny

My grocery store sells their own house brand of canned tomatoes in a no-salt added version, and I know one of the national brands offers low or no-salt canned tomatoes.

But other things I do with pasta: I sautee baby greens and sliced red peppers in garlic and olive oil and toss wtih pasta. Separately, I saute two chicken breasts (for the four of us) and slice them up and toss in.

Pesto -- the original Moosewood cookbook has a lower-oil pesto that's a mixture of basil, baby spinach, and some whole roma tomatoes, with olive oil and nuts. Whir that in the blender or food processor until pureed, pour over warm pasta and you're good to go

Romesco sauce - I buy roasted red peppers from the olive bar at the grocery store, but you can get them canned/jarred too. It's another "Trhow it all in the blender" sauce, and very nutritious with all the peppers.

Sun dried tomatoes - you don't really have to soak them - buy dried and soak briefly in hot water. Or just chop up and put into a skillet with some warm olive oil while you boil the water for pasta.

MzPix

We grow our own tomatoes, onions, peppers, and other produce. Picking, prepping and preserving can be done on weekends. We have several frozen portions of sliced or diced veggies (maybe a mix of pepper, onion, mushroom, and zucchini) and a portion of prepped tomatoes. Put out to thaw in the morning. Then in the evening just put the tomatoes in the blender with a dash of red wine, saute the veggies, and add to pasta. Total time in the evening to prepare that dinner is about 15 minutes. Since we grow our own veggies, there is zero salt added. We season with fresh oregano and ground peppercorn.

On a relaxed weekend in the Summer, we can make and can our own salt-free spaghetti sauce. If you don't have time to do that yourself or no where to grow veggies, you might visit the local Farmer's Market and look into the possibility of finding a farmer or home-preserving family that will do salt-free sauces for you. Then you can keep your local economy flourishing as well and keep all that salt out of your bodies.

Win-win.

Good luck

marsellient

Toss a couple of cups of cherry tomatoes with garlic, basil and olive oil (and whatever other veggies you feel like: peppers,onions, cauliflower,zucchini, eggplant, etc., etc.) and roast them while you are on your run. Boil up your pasta, add cheese and voila. Endless variations.

Pesto, steamed broccoli flowerets, garlic and roasted peppers from a jar. This is good with plain pasta or filled pasta.

Just as an aside, we freeze sauce tomatoes whole in the fall and I throw them in the slow cooler, just keep adding more as they cook down. Put the cooked tomatoes through a food mill to remove skins and seeds and you have your own, no salt added base for a sauce. I start it in the evening, so I can keep adding the tomatoes, cook overnight and process the next night or whenever I feel like it. I have an attachment for my kitchen machine, but I actually prefer the old cheapo food mill that sits over a bowl and you turn by hand. Less cleanup and quicker. It takes about ten minutes to process a whole big slow cooker full of cooked down tomatoes.

southpaw211

You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for the great suggestions.

I always get very suzy homemaker in the fall - I love to can, though I've only done applesauce and pickles. I usually freeze blanched sweet corn and also blueberries that we pick. I'm a terrible gardener and have never been able to get a bumper crop of tomatoes, but I could grab a nice chunk of them from the farmer's market. I love the idea of freezing them whole and putting them in the crock pot.

I do plant a ton of basil and freeze pesto all summer long, so that will be a snap pretty soon.