Summer Meal Series #6: Simple Homemade Pasta and Pizza Sauce
This summer, I’m going to be posting a series of fifteen low-cost, tasty, and easy-to-prepare meals that are literally straight from my own kitchen.
Today’s meal looks like a simple pasta…
… and it is, except that we do something a little different than most people seem to these days.
You see, we’re pretty picky about our sauce. We have found a few store-bought pasta sauces that we like, but they’re often $5 a jar or more. That’s a lot of money to pay if you have pasta with any regularity.
Our solution, of course, is to simply make the sauce ourselves.
This solves several concerns all at once. It gives us complete control over the ingredients for health and flavor concerns, but perhaps more importantly, it reduces the cost of a meal’s worth of sauce down to approximately the same cost as the absolute cheapest pasta sauce on the shelves.
In short, we can make pasta sauce at home that’s tastier and more appealing to us than any canned sauce we’ve found – even the $5-10 sauces – for less than $1 per jar (about $1.80 or so if you include lean ground beef in it, as we do).
The trick, of course, is that we make several batches of it at once and freeze all but one of them. In this example, we’re making five “jars” of sauce with a set of ingredients that’s just shy of $5.
A few notes on the ingredients, before I list them.
The ground beef is entirely optional in this recipe. If you want a meat sauce, use it. If you don’t, don’t use it. We used about 2.5 lbs. of ground beef in this recipe, averaging out to about 8 ounces of it per “batch,” or about 2 ounces per dinner plate for our family. I’d recommend using 2.5 pounds.
Second, we used canned diced tomatoes and sauce because, frankly, the fresh tomatoes aren’t quite here yet in Iowa. In about a month, we would be using fresh tomatoes for all of this, but the tomatoes currently in the store are still what I would consider ridiculously expensive. If you want to use all fresh ingredients, wait until tomatoes are in peak season and use fresh tomatoes for all of it. The price will be very reasonable and the flavor will be sublime.
Here’s our ingredient list.
4 medium onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 28 ounce cans diced tomatoes
1 28 ounce can tomato sauce
1 tablespoon basil
1 tablespoon oregano
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2.5 to 3 lbs. ground beef or ground pork (optional – if you don’t wish to use it, you can certainly add more vegetables)
2 4 ounce cans mushrooms (very optional – we didn’t use them)
You can, of course, add any other vegetables and spices you like. Chopped peppers are a good addition, for example.
First, we chop up the onions. We use an ulu knife (a gift) for this. It’s a special type of knife with a rounded blade that makes chopping vegetables quite easy. You basically grab the knife by the handle and rock it back and forth on the board – it chops vegetables quite well.
We also chopped up the basil and oregano:
We used fresh herbs in this. If you don’t have access to fresh herbs, dried basil and oregano work just fine. We just happen to have oregano all over the place this year (oregano sometimes just goes crazy in an herb garden), so we might as well use it.
Then, cook the meat, onion, and garlic together in a big pot until the meat is browned (or until the onion is browned a bit and really flavorful if you’re not using meat).
It’s cooking!
Once the meat/onions are ready, drain them, then add the rest of the ingredients (except for the mushrooms, if you’re using them). Stir it well, then let it simmer for 45 minutes.
If you have mushrooms you want to add, add them after thirty minutes of simmering.
Here’s the sauce after most of the simmering is finished.
Once it’s done simmering, just split it into five equal batches and freeze four of them.
We happened to have a bunch of leftover Ziploc quart freezer bags, which are perfect for this. Here are our bags, about ready to go into the freezer:
These freeze up really well. If we want to have a pasta meal – or a homemade pizza – that night, we just pull a bag out in the morning and stick it in the refrigerator. By evening, it’s ready to be warmed up to the desired temperature and still tastes great if used within six months or so.
As for the meal itself?
It was delicious. We had bread on the side with it (and some yoghurt after the meal) and it went over very well. We had a small amount of sauce left over, so we also made a lunch that consisted of the remaining sauce and a bit of the remaining pasta.
What did the sauce cost? Here’s our cost on the ingredients.
4 medium onions, chopped – $1.60
2 cloves garlic, minced – $0.50
2 28 ounce cans diced tomatoes – $2.38
1 28 ounce can tomato sauce – $1.19
1 tablespoon basil – $0.05 (from dried, estimated)
1 tablespoon oregano – $0.05 (from dried, estimated)
2 teaspoons salt – $0.02
1 teaspoon sugar – $0.02
1/4 teaspoon pepper – $0.01
2.5 to 3 lbs. ground beef or ground pork (optional) – $4.23
With the meat included, it totaled $10.05, so when you split it into five batches, each sauce batch cost $2.01. Very good for hearty sauce with meat.
Without the meat, it totaled $5.82, so when you split that into five batches, each sauce batch cost $1.16. That’s incredible, considering similar sauces at the store would easily be $5 a batch. We dearly love this stuff and prefer it to any store sauce we’ve tried.
Over the course of the five batches, if you’re normally buying large jars of gourmet sauce at $5 a jar, you’re saving $3.84 per meal. Over the five batches you made, you’ll save $19.20 – not bad for less than an hour’s work!
Continue reading Summer Meal Series #6: Simple Homemade Pasta and Pizza Sauce …
From The Simple Dollar.
What Works?
Of all of the parenting tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better at facilitating good behavior and a trusting bond like floor time. Simply getting down on the floor and playing with your children builds trust and good relationships like nothing else.
Of all of the dieting tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better than portion control (coupled with not keeping “junk” snacks in the house). The “saucer” strategy, in which you eat nothing at a meal except what will fit on a saucer, works like an absolute charm.
Of all of the saving tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better than simply automating it. Ordering the bank to simply scrape a small amount from my checking each month and put it in a savings account means I don’t have to think about it, and that means I won’t forget about it or talk myself out of it. The money is just there when I need it.
Of all of the time management tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better for me than the “inbox.” I keep a pocket notebook with me and whenever I think of something I need to do, I fill a whole page describing it (big words over several lines). I toss these pages in my “inbox” at home and go through them once or twice a day, making sure each one is dealt with.
When I stick to these singular tactics, I usually succeed. When I go away from them, I fail.
In fact, I’d say that finding tactics for success in life and money that actually work is well worth investing quite a bit of time.
Why? Because the ones that work make your life flow so much smoother that you quickly make the time and money back.
It’s worth the time to read through a list of 100 money saving tactics and try out fifteen of them just to find one tactic that genuinely and consistently saves significant money for me.
It’s worth the time to try every kind of easily-available fresh produce because the more fresh produce I actually like, the easier it is to have a very varied diet while still eating really healthy.
It’s worth the time to try all sorts of time management tactics because when I find one that shaves ten minutes off of an average day, I’ll make that time back over the long run.
The key to success is investing the time to figure out what really works for you. They might not be the same things that work for me – in fact, they probably won’t be.
I’ll close this message with a few challenges.
If you’re looking to spend less money, spend some time going through this list of 100 money saving tactics. Identify twenty that might just fit in your life and give them each a genuine shot. You’ll probably find that fifteen of them don’t fit you. The other five? They’ll be valuable enough that the entire time will be worth it.
If you’re looking to spend less time, use the same approach with my upcoming series on Getting Things Done, which will be loaded with time management ideas. Read the series carefully. Pick the elements that you think might work for you and give them a genuine shot. The ones that do work will stick and they’ll end up saving you so much time / making you so much more productive that you’ll flip.
Whatever that area in your life is that you want to work on, start trying some tactics. Go on a daily walk. Eat only the food that fits on a saucer. Read a challenging book for an hour a day.
Just try something instead of sitting there wishing it could be better.
Continue reading What Works? …
From The Simple Dollar.
What Works?
Of all of the parenting tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better at facilitating good behavior and a trusting bond like floor time. Simply getting down on the floor and playing with your children builds trust and good relationships like nothing else.
Of all of the dieting tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better than portion control (coupled with not keeping “junk” snacks in the house). The “saucer” strategy, in which you eat nothing at a meal except what will fit on a saucer, works like an absolute charm.
Of all of the saving tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better than simply automating it. Ordering the bank to simply scrape a small amount from my checking each month and put it in a savings account means I don’t have to think about it, and that means I won’t forget about it or talk myself out of it. The money is just there when I need it.
Of all of the time management tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better for me than the “inbox.” I keep a pocket notebook with me and whenever I think of something I need to do, I fill a whole page describing it (big words over several lines). I toss these pages in my “inbox” at home and go through them once or twice a day, making sure each one is dealt with.
When I stick to these singular tactics, I usually succeed. When I go away from them, I fail.
In fact, I’d say that finding tactics for success in life and money that actually work is well worth investing quite a bit of time.
Why? Because the ones that work make your life flow so much smoother that you quickly make the time and money back.
It’s worth the time to read through a list of 100 money saving tactics and try out fifteen of them just to find one tactic that genuinely and consistently saves significant money for me.
It’s worth the time to try every kind of easily-available fresh produce because the more fresh produce I actually like, the easier it is to have a very varied diet while still eating really healthy.
It’s worth the time to try all sorts of time management tactics because when I find one that shaves ten minutes off of an average day, I’ll make that time back over the long run.
The key to success is investing the time to figure out what really works for you. They might not be the same things that work for me – in fact, they probably won’t be.
I’ll close this message with a few challenges.
If you’re looking to spend less money, spend some time going through this list of 100 money saving tactics. Identify twenty that might just fit in your life and give them each a genuine shot. You’ll probably find that fifteen of them don’t fit you. The other five? They’ll be valuable enough that the entire time will be worth it.
If you’re looking to spend less time, use the same approach with my upcoming series on Getting Things Done, which will be loaded with time management ideas. Read the series carefully. Pick the elements that you think might work for you and give them a genuine shot. The ones that do work will stick and they’ll end up saving you so much time / making you so much more productive that you’ll flip.
Whatever that area in your life is that you want to work on, start trying some tactics. Go on a daily walk. Eat only the food that fits on a saucer. Read a challenging book for an hour a day.
Just try something instead of sitting there wishing it could be better.
Continue reading What Works? …
From The Simple Dollar.
What Works?
Of all of the parenting tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better at facilitating good behavior and a trusting bond like floor time. Simply getting down on the floor and playing with your children builds trust and good relationships like nothing else.
Of all of the dieting tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better than portion control (coupled with not keeping “junk” snacks in the house). The “saucer” strategy, in which you eat nothing at a meal except what will fit on a saucer, works like an absolute charm.
Of all of the saving tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better than simply automating it. Ordering the bank to simply scrape a small amount from my checking each month and put it in a savings account means I don’t have to think about it, and that means I won’t forget about it or talk myself out of it. The money is just there when I need it.
Of all of the time management tactics I’ve tried, nothing has worked better for me than the “inbox.” I keep a pocket notebook with me and whenever I think of something I need to do, I fill a whole page describing it (big words over several lines). I toss these pages in my “inbox” at home and go through them once or twice a day, making sure each one is dealt with.
When I stick to these singular tactics, I usually succeed. When I go away from them, I fail.
In fact, I’d say that finding tactics for success in life and money that actually work is well worth investing quite a bit of time.
Why? Because the ones that work make your life flow so much smoother that you quickly make the time and money back.
It’s worth the time to read through a list of 100 money saving tactics and try out fifteen of them just to find one tactic that genuinely and consistently saves significant money for me.
It’s worth the time to try every kind of easily-available fresh produce because the more fresh produce I actually like, the easier it is to have a very varied diet while still eating really healthy.
It’s worth the time to try all sorts of time management tactics because when I find one that shaves ten minutes off of an average day, I’ll make that time back over the long run.
The key to success is investing the time to figure out what really works for you. They might not be the same things that work for me – in fact, they probably won’t be.
I’ll close this message with a few challenges.
If you’re looking to spend less money, spend some time going through this list of 100 money saving tactics. Identify twenty that might just fit in your life and give them each a genuine shot. You’ll probably find that fifteen of them don’t fit you. The other five? They’ll be valuable enough that the entire time will be worth it.
If you’re looking to spend less time, use the same approach with my upcoming series on Getting Things Done, which will be loaded with time management ideas. Read the series carefully. Pick the elements that you think might work for you and give them a genuine shot. The ones that do work will stick and they’ll end up saving you so much time / making you so much more productive that you’ll flip.
Whatever that area in your life is that you want to work on, start trying some tactics. Go on a daily walk. Eat only the food that fits on a saucer. Read a challenging book for an hour a day.
Just try something instead of sitting there wishing it could be better.
Continue reading What Works? …
From The Simple Dollar.
The First Step Towards Getting Out of Debt
A while back (has it been almost eighteen months already?), I wrote a very detailed article about coming up with a debt repayment plan. This plan works – it’s what I did when I realized that I was in serious financial trouble and needed to overcome it.
Yet it’s not the first step in the process. The absolute first step in getting out of a bad debt situation is to break your personal cycle of debt usage.
If you’re not willing to completely stop using debt and to spend less than you earn every single month, no debt repayment plan of any kind will help you.
This is often harder than it sounds. For many people who find themselves in a desperate debt situation, living above their means is simply a way of life. I know that it certainly was for me. I wouldn’t even think twice about spending small amounts of money and I usually found “good” reasons to spend larger amounts as well.
I firmly believed that I deserved lots of material items and the simple fact that I didn’t actually have the money to pay for them didn’t matter. I had credit, after all.
I had part of it right: I did deserve the good things in life. What I didn’t understand, though, is that the good things in life aren’t bought with a credit card.
The good things in life come from having less stress in your life. Stress is derived from a job that you can’t walk away from because you have so many bills to pay. Stress comes from facing a mountain of bills without much cash in your checking account. Stress comes from wondering whether or not you’re going to be able to make rent or make the mortgage payment next month. Stress comes from having more stuff than you can enjoy or possibly deal with. Spending less than you earn alleviates all of these stresses.
That reduced stress helps you across the board. It improves your health. It improves your energy level. It improves your attitude. When you improve in all of these areas, people notice.
When I was in debt, I had all the material trappings I could ever want – but that’s all I had. I stayed up at night worrying about my bills. I was stuck living in a tiny apartment – and even then I was sometimes struggling to pay the rent. I was scared to death to step out of line even one inch at work, which meant that I constantly played it safe, which meant that much of the enjoyment of the job evaporated since I was now doing work I didn’t really want to do. My wife and I got upset with each other quite regularly because of the money issues.
But, by golly, I had myself plenty of electronic gadgets and nice clothes!
Those material items were a prison. They kept me sequestered away from the life I really wanted to lead.
When I realized that those very things that I thought I truly wanted were the very things that were making me unhappy, it became easy to make some changes. I tossed the credit cards, sold off a lot of my gadgets to whack down my debts quickly, and started discovering new things to do.
Who would have ever thought it was more fun to go on a bike ride on a lazy afternoon than to buy yet another barely-played DVD or video game? Even better, when I got home, I wasn’t facing a stack of bills.
The first step towards getting out of debt is to recognize where the real problem lies. It comes from the things you choose to spend your money on – the very things you’ve convinced yourself that you need. Those splurge purchases that are the “spice” of your life are the very things that are causing you to be stressed out, stuck in place, and looking for a way out.
You don’t need that stuff.
Continue reading The First Step Towards Getting Out of Debt …
From The Simple Dollar.
Never Eat Alone: Managing the Gatekeeper
This is the fifth of sixteen parts of a “book club” reading and discussion of Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz’s Never Eat Alone, where this book on building a lifelong community of colleagues, contacts, friends, and mentors is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the ninth and tenth chapters, “”Warming the Cold Call” and “Managing the Gatekeeper – Artfully,” which appear on pages 79 through 93.
In getting to know a person, the absolute biggest moment I dread is that first moment of introduction, when you don’t know each other. Knocking on someone’s door to introduce myself or greeting someone I don’t know in a public situation makes me feel really uncomfortable. Even worse: trying to get through a “gatekeeper” (an administrative or personal assistant) to get a meeting with someone.
Ferrazzi feels the same way, it seems. He focuses two thoughtful chapters on this very problem. Let’s dig in.
Draft Off a Reference
Ferrazzi mentions four rules for turning a cold call into a “warm” one – in other words, making the ultimate introduction of yourself to another person much more friendly by taking the time to put some pieces in place. He often relates this process to making a sale, since salesmen are often in the business of establishing such a rapport, although that connection is just as important for anyone. His first tactic, discussed on page 83, is straightforward – find a person that you have in common:
Credibility is the first thing you want to establish in any interaction, and ultimately, no one will buy from you unless you establish trust. Having a mutual friend or even acquaintance will immediately make you stand out from the other anonymous individuals vying for a piece of someone’s time.
So, if you want to meet someone important, your first step is to find someone in common that you know. Research that person and see who their obvious connections are – and see if you know any of them. Ask around your own social network and see if anyone knows this person.
I’ll use myself as an example. Let’s say I’m wanting to meet a particular writer at a meeting in the future. I could either walk up to that person without anything in common and make some awkward small talk (making that person want to be anywhere else), or I could identify someone we have in common and use that as an introductory point.
Why does this work? If you mention someone that person knows in an introduction, the person likely feels some obligation to listen to you, not just because of you, but via a sense of obligation to that person you have in common.
Remember, though, that the person in common is just enough to get your foot in the door. It’s up to you to carry it further.
State Your Value
If you do finally have someone’s attention, you need to quickly make it clear to them that you represent some sort of value to them. On page 85:
Once you have someone’s commitment to hear you out for thirty seconds, you’ll need to be prepared to deliver a high-value proposition. You’ve got very little time to articulate why that person should not try to get off the phone as quickly as possible. Remember, it’s all about them. What can you do for them?
Why exactly would I want to talk to Stephen King? Obviously, for me, it’s to get some advice on writing.
But why should Stephen King possibly be interested in talking to me? It would be an enormous stretch to call myself a peer of his – I’ve written one very simple nonfiction book that wasn’t a bestseller, while he’s written piles of bestselling fiction. Why would he want to talk to me at all beyond fifteen seconds of greeting a fan and signing an autograph?
Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question. I do know that anything I got beyond that from a conversation with him would be solely from his good graces – but it’s never a good idea to bank on anyone’s good graces.
Instead, it’d be a waste of time for me to ever talk to him (besides attending a reading or something like that) unless I have something of value to offer that he might be interested in.
Just think about it this way – unless you can offer someone some real value, why would they talk to you? And remember that real value doesn’t mean that you’re offering them a “great deal” – it’s only a “great deal” for you, not them.
If you can’t figure out what value you’re offering, you shouldn’t expect to build a great relationship with someone.
Quick, Convenient, and Definitive
If you want to extend your relationship with someone beyond a quick meeting, you have to make it as easy as possible for them. On page 85:
You want to impart both a sense of urgency and a sense of convenience. Instead of closing with “We should get together some time soon,” I like to finalize with something like “I’m going to be in town next week. How about lunch on Tuesday? I know this is going to be important for both of us, so I’ll make time no matter what.”
At the bare minimum, exchange contact information – or at least get theirs. If you don’t do that, then there’s no way you can establish any sort of lasting relationship with that other person.
A much better step is to set up some sort of follow-up connection. Perhaps you can send along some additional information. Maybe you can meet later on for something else.
The key is to extend the conversation – make something concrete that has the expectation that at least one of you will be taking action to exchange more info (and it should be you making that action happen, since you’re the initiator).
Compromise
Ferrazzi’s final tactic for making those “first meetings” go better appears on page 86:
Robert B. Cialdini’s book The Psychology of Persuasion shows how compromise is a powerful force in human relations. An example used to illustrate this idea concerns Boy Scouts, who are often turned down initially when trying to sell raffle tickets. It has been statistically shown, however, that when the Scout then offers candy bars instead, a less costly item, customers will buy the candy even if they don’t really want it. In giving in to the concession, people feel as if they’re holding up their social obligation to others. So remember, try for a lot – it will help you settle for what it is you really need.
In other words, suggest something big, like going out to lunch next week. If they hesitate, suggest something simpler, like swapping email addresses or Twitter usernames or phone numbers – a compromise.
Why? The “compromise” means that you’re doing them a favor by effectively reducing their commitment – you’ve made it easy for them to follow up instead of hard for them.
Since, in the end, all you really want is a way to keep the conversation going, you still get what you want out of it with a much higher degree of success.
The Gatekeeper
How do you handle administrative assistants? On page 87, Ferrazzi begins to discuss it:
First, make the gatekeeper an ally rather than an adversary. And never, ever get on his or her bad side. Many executive assistants are their bosses’ minority partners. Don’t think of them as “secretaries” or as “assistants.” In fact, they are associates or lifelines.
Every time I have ever tried to go heat-to-head with an administrative assistant, I’ve lost.
You will lose if you antagonize an administrative assistant. So don’t – it’s not worth it. You’re better off just backing off and letting it drop than you are getting in a war with a schedule-keeper.
Personally, the best approach I’ve ever found is just to be flat-out honest with administrative assistants. Tell them flat-out why you’re there, why you’re making that contact, and who suggested that you do it. Most administrative assistants vastly prefer straightforward honesty and humility to almost anything else – providing the information they need as easily as possible makes their life easier and makes them like you better.
So, whenever I’m trying to schedule something with an administrative assistant, I’m as straightforward as can be and provide as much information as can possibly be necessary right off the bat. I’m also usually just honest about my situation.
That approach has rarely failed me.
Respect
On page 91, Ferrazzi touches on how to keep on an administrative assistant’s good side:
Always respect the gatekeeper’s power. Treat them with the dignity they deserve. If you do, doors will open for you to even the most powerful decision makers. What does it mean to treat them with dignity? Acknowledge their help. Thank them by phone, flowers, a note.
Yes, the good old handwritten note. It works time and time again.
Let me make this as clear as I can: whenever someone helps you in a significant way in your career or your life, send them a handwritten note thanking them for it. This will always be a big positive for you.
Here’s a detailed guide for writing an effective thank you note, no matter what the occasion.
On Saturday, we’ll tackle the eleventh and twelfth chapters – “Never Eat Alone” and “Share Your Passions.”
Continue reading Never Eat Alone: Managing the Gatekeeper …
From The Simple Dollar.