SoItsComeToThis's Profile

My (almost) 90 year old grandmother was born two months after her parents came from Italy. I consider her the first and foremost resource for sauce. She grows her own Roma tomatoes and strains them herself. She’ll sauté some garlic cloves in olive oil first, though, and adds salt to taste after including a leaf of basil. She won’t add other spices because she thinks that only masks the taste of stale tomatoes.

I don’t have the opportunity to grow my own tomatoes and no brand can come as close to fresh as Bionaturae’s (http://www.bionaturae.com/tomatoes.html). Instead of cans with a BPA liner, they use a glass jar for their organic tomatoes. The difference in packaging and/or the organics makes a huge difference and when I make my grandmother’s sauce, it almost tastes as good as hers.

Her recipe is pretty simple:

1-2 whole peeled garlic cloves
2-4 tbsp of olive oil
24 oz of strained tomatoes
1 basil leaf

Sauté the garlic in the olive oil but don’t let it brown. Add the strained tomatoes and simmer for 45 minutes or until desired thickness is reached.

That’s it. Nothing else. Anything else, in her mind, is only going to make up for bad tomatoes. Of course, she does add meatballs or my grandfather’s sausage links if she wants to make a meat sauce. Sugar, wine, pastes, cheese, or other ingredients (especially butter) that can dilute tomatoes is just wrong. But the key is to avoid canned anything and go for fresh or jarred tomatoes.

My grandmother (1st Gen Italian American) uses strained tomatoes for her sauce when she isn't using her own garden tomatoes. When she gave my wife the recipe, we looked or BPA free tomatoes and, so far, have only found some from Bionaturae. You can see their full line of tomato products here: http://www.bionaturae.com/tomato.html

Some of them are canned but we use the 24oz jar. We find the taste to be better than Pomi - which is what a lot of people I know use.

Trust me when I say the Bionaturae strained tomatoes produce a very flavorful sauce. Coming from my grandmother's Italian heritage (and great cooking) I'm picky about my sauce and the 24oz jar will be a perfect organic & BPA free resource for all your sauce needs.

I have a Saddleback Leather Co. briefcase (which I use as a laptop bag, too) and it's one of the best things I've bought. Ever. When I get an iPad, I'll be getting their gadget sleeve.

Personally, I think it's worth it and can't see myself getting any other case.

Hopefully this counts as one submission...

At work, where I use Windows, [Win]-R; typing it brings up the 'Run' dialog box where I can quickly launch a program (winword, excel), browse a drive (c:\), and quickly scroll down the previously used commands for fast access.

At home, where I'm all Mac, [Command]-[Backspace] so I can erase my words quickly while I blog or email.