Wasn’t I just talking about putting dates on my recipes last week? Well, this original Lora recipe is dated…12-1-1995 and it looks like it has been around that long! The piece of paper I penned it on has splashes of tomatoes and sauce all over it like any good recipe would. Back when we lived in the Carolinas I created this recipe to make sauce with the oodles of tomatoes we would have delivered by “Walter” long before delivery services were the rage. Now, for those who are new here, “Walter” was The Salesman’s father; but, back when I started blogging no one was into sharing real names on the World Wide Web because, it was the World Wide Web.
Since we lived close by the the in-loves, we were given an abundance of tomatoes and though my favorite summertime meal is a tomato sandwich, there was no way I could even make a dent in the amount of tomatoes shared with us, even if I had two sandwiches a day during garden season. My mother-in-love would can; but, I had never used a pressure cooker and really didn’t want to start because I was afraid I’d blow up our historic home. So, I came up with a sauce recipe that I could freeze influenced by my mama’s old cookbooks and my college Fannie Farmer cookbook.
Now over the years, my cooking and baking style has changed, the biggest factor was going sugar and gluten-free which paved the way for having sugar out of the house when The Salesman was diagnosed with diabetes. When you read the recipe, I have replaced sugar with a diabetic friendly, non-GMO, organic sweetener called Gentle Sweet. You can click on the highlighted links to read about its benefits and order it and have it shipped to your home. And then you know I am all things healthy and Young Living, so I decided to try their Vitality Oils which they say are “perfect for adding flavor to your favorite foods or using as dietary supplements, the Vitality dietary essential oil line gives you the freedom to share and explore some of our best-loved essential oils in a variety of nutritious and delicious ways.” And since I’d received a handful of the vitality oils free last month, I decided to try them in making my sauce. I believe they gave the sauce a robust flavor! I used oregano and parsley vitality oils and will use them when I make “the sauce” again!
So, without further ado, I present, an original, and delicious recipe, enjoyed by me, and The Salesman, and all family and friends that I have shared the recipe with:
Lora’s Marinara Sauce:
Saute:
1 diced onion in 4 tablespoons olive oil OR 1/2 stick of butter (real butter)
Add:
2 quarts of garden tomatoes (if canned, drain them)
8 ounces sliced mushrooms (if canned, drain them)
5 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. oregano – OR 1 drop of Young Living Oregano vitality oil
1 tsp. basil
1 tsp. chili powder
1 Tbsp. parsley flakes OR two drops of Young Living Parsley Vitality Oil
Black pepper – to taste
Paprika – to taste
Gentle Sweet – to taste – because you know that I’m a Trim Healthy Mama and back in 1995, this line use to say sugar vs. Gentle Sweet!
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer 1-2 hours.
I hope you enjoy this tried and true original recipe. While it is simmering, your home will smell like an Italian restaurant! This sauce is so good on vegetables and here is a post where I pulled it out of the freezer and served it over spaghetti squash, and in this post I used the marinara as a pizza sauce, it is great over meatballs and you can read the post here. Serve it over pasta, use it in your lasagna recipe, etc. I’ve never been disappointed in trying it in a new way. This weekend I served it for the first time ever over patty pan squash (as pictured above) and impressed myself a bit with how restaurant worthy the dish looked. And, it was yummy.
Enjoy!
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