Editor’s note: This post is this week’s Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. Of course, each recipe can also be prepared during the week (that’s when I’m trying it), but with the hectic schedules of most, a recipe might be easier to try on the weekend when work is generally less of a factor. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

For many of us, Friday night means either one of two things: Ordering takeout so that you don’t have to cook, or going out to eat - so that again, you don’t have to cook. However, with two kids, in our home sometimes even just getting out of the house is more than we want to do at the end of the work week. And where we live, the delivery options are limited to $20 bucks for a warmed cardboard pizza box full of questionably preserved meats, a random mushroom or two, and some packets of powdered cheese to soak up the orange-ish grease.

(Granted, a few years ago, that would have sounded appetizing.)

Really, on Friday nights it comes down to having something easy, and increasingly these days, cheap.

With that in mind, there are a handful of low cost essential dishes that I think everyone should know how to make more or less from scratch: a simple vegetable (or chicken) soup, a basic vinaigrette, and a quick and easy homemade pasta sauce. If you stock the ingredients for these items in your pantry or refrigerator, you can cover just about any impromptu dinner gathering or simple, end of the week meal at home with very little effort. Of course, if you have room on that Visa card you can also cover it, but this is a lot more fun, and interest-free (please note the restraint in not using the word “priceless” in that description).

In that spirit, here is this week’s Almost Fit recipe. It may not be the Gourmand’s exotic Foodie challenge, but it sure does make Friday nights on a budget a little easier.

Friday Fit Recipe #9: “It’s Friday night and I don’t feel like cooking” pasta sauce

Ingredients

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic - finely minced
3 tablespoons dry red wine
1 28oz. can whole tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon oregano

Serves 2-3.

Preparation

In a sauce pan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic and sauté for about 2 minutes. Add red wine and cook down for about 3 minutes. Add entire can of tomatoes, including juice, crushing tomatoes with hands or back of wooden spoon. Reduce heat to med-low and simmer for approx. 15 minutes. Add basil and oregano and cook for 2 more minutes. salt and pepper to taste.

To Serve

Serve over pasta of choice with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

Options

My favorite option: Add 1 teaspoon capers, roughly chopped.

Comments

I think that it is probably an indisputable fact that the absolute easiest, cheapest solution for pasta sauce would be popping the vacuum seal on a jar and dumping it into a pan. We do that on occasion too with good quality sauces (high fructose corn syrup and preservative-free). But if you really want to know exactly what you’re eating in a sauce (particularly things like sodium), there’s no better way than spending a few minutes cooking it for yourself. And particularly if you happen to be entertaining on-the-fly - making a basic pasta sauce is a great source of kitchen conversation (cooking almost always is), and can be done with a glass of wine in hand.

One last thing: This sauce is a one that can be prepared alongside your kids, which can turn into a great gift to impart to them for later in life when they might find the ability to make a solid, basic pasta sauce a useful “impress the in-laws” skill. And who doesn’t need a few of those?

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