Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

Yes I know it has been a long time since I have posted on here.. I rarely have anything worth posting on here, let alone time to do so. I felt, however, this would be the most efficient way of getting multiple people my 'recipe'.

A lot of people have asked me how I make my spaghetti sauce and for a recipe.. but I don't really have one. I learned from my dad and he doesn't use one either. This is my attempt at a recipe for you all since I don't really measure my ingredients either, it's all by sight in the palm of my hand, as well as taste. I will do my best to tell you how much of each ingredient to add. This year I started adding Butternut squash to add a little extra nutrition to it, but I blend the whole pot at the end since my husband doesn't like chunks in his sauce.. haha, if you don't want to blend it or don't have a hand-held blender you can leave out the squash or just use a potato masher to break up the chunks a bit at the end. Alright, here we go.

First I take the Onions, Garlic, Herbs, Salt/Pepper and let those saute in Olive Oil until the onions start to look glassy and clear. Remember to do this on low heat so the onions don't just burn and get crispy. My oil measurement is simply a guesstimate, so make sure you keep the bottom of the pot/onions barely covered with oil but don't drown them. The oil is a tool to help cook down your onions without them sticking to the pot and drying out. The more oil you have the more greasy your sauce will be at the end. Just use enough to cook down your onions. (see onions pictures below for how much oil I use )

Here are my 'measurements' for my herbs... I tried sticking my handfuls into measuring spoons and my amount of parsley is roughly 1 teaspoon, the rest of the herbs are roughly 1/2 teaspoon as shown in the rosemary picture below. The amount of herbs may change a little depending on how strong your herbs are, how much/little butternut squash you put in, how strong you like the taste of your sauce, etc. I'm sorry I can't be more clear than that.. however, if your house starts to smell like an Italian grandmother's kitchen, I think you are on the right track.

Rosemary

Parsley

Here is what the onions will look like when they are glassy and cooked.

Glassy onions with spices

After the onions are cooked down, I add the Butternut Squash, Tomato Sauce, and Stewed Tomatoes. I use the organic tomato sauce and organic Italian-style stewed tomatoes from Costco- three cans of each.

This I let simmer on medium heat for about 45 min to an hour depending on how long it takes the squash to get cooked through. You will be able to tell when you can stick a fork through it easily just like when you are boiling potatoes. Stir every once in a while to make sure it isn't burning to the bottom of the pot. Just a friendly tip, keep a lid on when not stirring to avoid painful/messy splatters.

Simmering on Med. heat

When you can stick a fork through the squash the sauce is done. I then turn off the heat and wait for it to stop bubbling before removing the lid and blending with the hand-held blender. I hope I don't have to remind any of you that this sauce is still quite hot.. please be careful with your hand-held blenders and try not to lift it up too high- you don't have a safeguard of a lid to protect you from the hot liquid.. 

Blended sauce

When I finish blending it, I allow it to sit and cool for a bit- usually about a half hour at least before bagging to freeze. Remove all air from each bag before sealing. One batch usually gives me about six, double-serving bags to freeze and enough sauce for the two of us to use for dinner that night. Since I don't use exact measurements on squash or how much gets scooped into the bags each time, it varies how many bags I have.

After I scoop the sauce into quart freezer bags I lay them flat in the freezer to store easier later. Then I stack them vertically into a dollar store basket in my freezer to take up less space. One batch usually stays good for a few months.. We never let it go much longer than that before we need to make another batch so I honestly don't have any idea how long it actually stays good in the freezer. 

Here are some pics of how I freeze my bags of sauce. 

approx. amount of sauce I put in each bag

bags laying horizontally to freeze

frozen sauce stored vertically in dollar store basket

Here is the best recipe I can come up with as far as measurements go. 

Spaghetti Sauce

Ingredients:
3 cans (15oz) Italian-Style Stewed Tomatoes
3 cans (15oz) Tomato Sauce 
1/2 Medium Onion, diced 
3-5 cloves of Garlic, minced (depending on how much you enjoy garlic.. I like it a lot.) 
3-4 C. Butternut Squash, cut into ~1" cubes 
~1/4 C. Olive Oil 
1 teaspoon Dried Parsley 
1/2 teaspoon Dried Rosemary 
1/2 teaspoon Dried Oregano 
1/2 teaspoon Dried Basil 
1/2 teaspoon Dried Thyme 
Salt and Pepper to taste 

Instructions:
Heat a large pot on low heat. Add onions, garlic, herbs and salt/pepper to olive oil and saute on low heat for about 10 min. until onions get glassy and clear. Add butternut squash, tomatoes, and tomato sauce; let simmer on medium heat for about 45 min to an hour until squash is cooked through, stirring every couple minutes. Once squash is cooked through, turn heat off and wait for bubbling to stop. Use the hand blender to break up the squash and tomatoes to make a smooth sauce. 

Once again, I do not know the exact length of time each bag will stay good in the freezer, I never make it more than a few months before all the bags are gone and I need to make a new batch. Hope you all enjoy this as much as I do. It's pretty easy and slightly cheaper than buying jars of pre-made, plus I know what all the ingredients are, not to mention I enjoy it significantly more than store-bought sauce. When I go to use a frozen bag of sauce I simply break it up into a sauce pan and re-heat. I usually avoid the microwave if I can, but I'm sure you can re-heat it in there as well.

Making this House a Home

WARNING: this is a very long post.. my apologies.

Ok, so once again it has been ages since I have blogged and not much has happened besides changing things up at the home. We lucked out with a lovely little two bedroom apartment apartment in Westminster, Ca. and we have been working for the past nine months to make it ours. Here are some of the things we have been working on..

First, we worked on a little organization of our 'stuff' and got a bunch of shelving units from everybody's favourite cheap furniture store.. that's right, Ikea.

  bookshelfs, DVD holders, media stand
We originally wanted to have the DVD stands surround the media stand, but due to the size of the sofas and the size of the room, there was really only one way to set everything up and since the lovely wall heater is on the wall we need to use for the TV, for now they are on another wall. Don't worry though, we will have them encase the media stand once we have another place to call home. ;)

Next, we got a fabulous little kitchen table from Living Spaces(very reasonably priced I might add, if anyone is looking for kitchen tables..). We decided we wanted to get a bar height table and this is what we got:

I had some bi-fold doors as a backdrop in our wedding and decided to turn them into a headboard. I have a few kinks to work out with keeping them connected together, but I'm pretty happy with the result. I also added curtains to the closet and took down the huge dark brown double doors.


Remember the last picture.. it will come in handy near the end of the post. Yes, that is a cardboard box, and yes, that is what I used as a nightstand for the past nine months.

In the meantime we celebrated our one month anniversary and decided that we would cut out top layer of cake with that date instead of a year later.. can you even fathom eating cake a year later, I mean, come on now. That's gross. We, on the other hand, enjoyed our cake thoroughly. it was so good! :)

I decided to make a little personal statement for our door and worked on figuring out some sort of 'wreath'. This is what I came up with:

 

Once again, Thanks go to Ikea for the 'clearanced' frame.. that they still sell(to this day I can't find anything wrong with it..). got the rest of the materials at Hobby Lobby and threw it all together with a glue gun. I love it!  :)

We had a lovely little mishap in the bathroom (not our fault, btw) which led to a brand new bathroom for us. We were without a bathroom for 12 days, but I'm glad that we caught the problem early on or it may have been a lot messier.. We noticed that the bathroom was extremely flooded after a shower one night, and figured we had just leaked water through the old glass doors of the shower; but after attempting to mop up the water with towels it just kept coming and coming.. We told the building managers and this was the result:

This was the really old decayed pipe under our tub.. yes, that is a huge chunk missing.. and the source of all the water. 

So long story short, they brought in some.. interesting, workers who liked to rummage through our closet, use up our toilet paper, steal the rest of the roll of said toilet paper, and continue to be creeptastic. However, in the end, the results were pretty good. We thought the walls were a little yellowed from previous paint and did not do the new remodel justice so we gave the walls a nice clean coat of white and that was that. So here are the before and afters.. sorry the pics are so small, it's hard to get any sort of angle into the bathroom.. but I guess that's a good thing..? haha 

Part of the remodel included a new vanity since the old one was damaged from the water, and we also were given a tub without the annoying sliding glass doors, so we were able to put in a cute shower curtain. :) We also added one of those storage things above the toilet for extra storage, and put in some new towel rods.

After the bathroom ordeal we decided to give the kitchen a little lovin'. We started with the faucet since it was so short that I couldn't possibly clean a pot in our sink. once again, here are the before and afters:

 

Luckily for us the first faucet ended up being faulty and the problem for the leak under the sink so the faucet price got waived. Hooray for free upgrades! :) (Even if it hadn't, though, we got a very reasonably priced one from Costco)

During this time we had to travel up to Utah for my, duh duh duh... GRADUATION! Hooray for finally being an alumni with a bachelors degree.. took me long enough.

We took on another kitchen project, a very large project mind you, in resurfacing our kitchen cabinets.. they had that orange-y, yellowed seventies wood colour and we thought they would look much better in black. we started first with a wood stain and began sanding everything down to remove the varnish that was left.. if any. The stain route didn't really work so we got a gallon of black semi-gloss paint from Home Depot(Behr brand). That really did the trick and we were once again pleased with the outcome.

 

Before, during, almost there..... and Done. We chose to paint them blue on the inside to add a little brightness since black would add darkness to the already small and dark kitchen. Ironically we found that the kitchen was brighter with the black cabinets.. I think that was just because the black makes the yellowed walls look more white instead of dingy. It also helps that we added the bright-light light bulbs throughout the house, making our home much more happy and bright.

 The next little project I decided to mostly take on my own was to plant a small garden. I went to Home Depot again and grabbed a large galvanized tub and used a nail to make holes in the bottom for irrigation, which worked out really well. my little garden started out great and grew very quickly!

I had a lot of fun with this little guy and I felt very productive. it's empowering to grow your own veggies! 

We had to get me a new car for various reasons, but we were pleased with the outcome, We ended up with an '06 Toyota Matrix, I love it! Yes, I put a U of U alumni license plate cover on it. ;) 

Around now, the little garden had overspent it's welcome in the tiny tub and wanted a larger home.. so we decided to make a bigger garden using cinder blocks. 

Here is the overflowing tub... definitely needed a change. 

 Now that I no longer have a truck we truly tested the strength of my little hatchback.. it was filled to the brim!

I think we added up the weight of all the bricks, stones and blocks to around 800 pounds.. we had to drive home VERY slowly. haha, but it turned out a success! My little garden definitely needed the extra space. 

Alright, so up to this point(about 8 months after we moved in..) we still hadn't put anything up on the walls and decided we could find places for the pictures, as well as some shelves. Here's what we came up with: 

 

The trio of pics is in the living room, the double shelf is above the stove (we usually have our four most used pots and pans hanging from the bottom but they were in the sink when I took the pic..hooray for dirty dishes..), The temple pics and Cucina sign is in with the kitchen table, as is the long shelf with baskets. I use the baskets to separate the mail and a few other little things that I don't know where to put.

Ok, so I told you to remember the cardboard box for a nightstand picture right? well, you can scroll up to the beginning if you don't. (I already have too many pictures to refresh your memory.. ) We looked all over for a few months and found nothing for a nightstand that was reasonably priced. Everything we came across was more than $90 and were super small and horribly made! Anyway, on the graduation trip to Utah I went to my grandpa's house to help clean up a bit. (He passed away last October and the family has been finalizing the estate) there were many things up there that were up for grabs since the siblings didn't want any more. Among these belongings was a little dresser that I thought would be absolutely perfect for a nightstand! All I had to do was peel off all the little kid stickers, strip the gross teal paint, and put a fresh coat of paint on it. Or so I thought... This project went on for about 5 months or so.. which  means that it was going on during most of these little projects that I just posted about. That's right.. 5 months. For a little dresser. It was the black hole of projects. Here are the before, during and after pics: 

Lovely colour... right? I say no. 

One of the many attempts to strip the paint.. we went from sanding(the sandpaper just got gummed up with thick paint), to one kind of paint stripper(which didn't work..), to another kind of stripper(which actually worked) before we got just about all the paint off this little guy. 

Gave it a quick spray down of white to give it a base coat to work with.. I still hadn't chosen the final colour after this many months. 

I decided to transform the upper drawer into a shelf with a pull down door, and drill a hole in the back to allow for a cord to make it a charging station. (that is the Hub's new toy from his birthday.. a fun little drill to do all the projects I request.. haha, little did he know ;) )

 

Dun Dun Dun!!!! the final result happened this afternoon and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. I chose to go with a light grey to give it a nice dignified, neutral colour to go with just about anything we change in the bedroom.. because trust me, it is never getting touched again.. haha.

Well, I think that is about all the changes that I can document for one day.. sorry for the long post, it has been a busy past couple of months trying to juggle all these projects, jobs, a small social life, and applying to PTA schools. Life is always moving forward! I'm proud of my little family and the projects we can turn out with a little ingenuity. I have loved turning this shell of a house into Our Home. Best of luck on all your prokects that you might be going through!

New Beginnings

I got MARRIED!!! :) So I suppose there really was something in the works in May and apparently I'm not a very good blogger, especially while I'm engaged and going to school.. haha, but I am going to try and catch you all up. First up in a long line of catch-up posts, THE story. Enjoy!

I am a Utah girl through and through, but this boy's love has turned me to a California girl for the next few years. I lived here once before, and that is how I met this man of mine. in 2004 I moved to Huntington Beach, Ca to swim and play water polo for Golden West College. There is an LDS institute of religion across the street from said community college where there was a group of fun people that I became friends with. Among this group of friends was a cute boy who just got home from his mission and we went out on a few dates. Yes. This was THE one. I just didn't know it then, and let him get away. However we did have some fun in the meantime.

This is the mini-golf place that we spent our first date. 

This is the foyer at the institute that we spent many hours laughing and hanging out

This is a broom much like the one he bruised my ankle with in broom-hockey for FHE.. haha 

Long story short, I was a jerk and kinda stopped talking to him because I didn't know how to communicate in inter-personal relationships. 

...Meanwhile

Seven years go by...

I went on a mission, he got his undergrad at CSU Fullerton, I came home from my mission and carried on with my undergrad at the U of U, he  got his masters at Argosy, we both went through a few relationships, and life went on as usual, until last march when I decided to go back to HB to visit a good friend for spring break. She and I went to ward temple night with my old(her current) ward the next night, and low and behold, guess who was still in the ward and present..? that's right, folks- Him! :) I had a feeling I should talk to him, so after the baptism session we were outside talking as a group and I snuck a moment or two with him out on the steps of the temple. He didn't seem entirely interested in talking to me, mainly because I was a jerk last time we talked.. but regardless we started emailing each other that night and the next day, which lead to texting the following afternoon, and me practically begging him to do something with me the following night. Needless to say, it took some dragging it out of him, but he was glad to go out with me that evening and offered to pick me up. He ended up choosing the place to eat, and it has become our favourite spot for dinner.. Tsunami Sushi! :) 

 We may or may not be going there tonight for date night, and we will most definitely be getting the cheesecake roll.. that's right people. drool away. ;) Anyway, we ended up at Tsunami for about two hours just talking away and catching up, then we walked along the beach for another hour and sat down to talk for about another two.. needless to say, we were having a great night. I went home that night and my friend tried to convince me that it wasn't a good idea to date him, especially with the distance and the history we had, but I still wanted to talk to him. The next night was another ward activity and I saw him most of the evening, and the following day was church so I saw him off and on all day. After I went home from that weekend, we texted off and on. Which lead to phone calls, and soon after that, skype calls. During this time I went on a trip to Europe with my parents for a week and a half and I hated not being able to communicate with him  easily. This made me realize that I didn't want to go another day without talking to him. That lead to three hour skype chats every night, until we decided it was time for a visit. He came up to Utah to visit me at the end of June/beginning of July, and yes, ladies and gentlemen, we went ring shopping. ;)

A few weeks later, I went down to visit another friend which was supposed to be a long girls weekend in Vegas, but changed at the last minute, landing us in HB. He hijacked that visit and stole me from my friend for the night to go meet his parents for the first time, or so I though.. we went the opposite direction on the freeway where he took me to the beach at sunset, and we stood on a cliff overlooking the view. He stood behind me with his arms wrapped around me, then as the sun was setting he spun me around, I nearly fell to my death- thank goodness he was holding on, and there he was kneeling down holding a ring. I was breathless for a minute or two, but at least he had his loving little speech to go through as I regained myself.

Of course I said yes, and here is the little beauty I wear on my left hand everyday. My husband picked out the best ring, that is everything I could possibly want, completely on his own! :)

 We were sealed on January 5, 2013 in the Newport Beach Temple for Time and all Eternity. Good grief I love my man! :)