Easy Marinara

I love tomatoes. I love tomato sauce. I love garlic and onions and celery and green peppers and carrots and basically all the ingredients that I use to make my easy marinara sauce. In my oh-so-humble opinion, it is way better than what you can buy in a jar and it's not even a little bit difficult, which makes it a no-brainer for weeks like this one (when I'm behind with my grading and working two jobs and going to credentialing class and will probably have to do laundry if I want to have any clean underwear...and I do want them).

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, finely diced**
• 1/2 green pepper, minced
• 2 ribs celery, minced
• 1 large carrot, minced
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups fat free chicken broth
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 Tbs Italian seasoning (or combination of rosemary, thyme, oregano, and basil, minimum)
• Additional seasonings, listed above
• Salt and pepper
• 2 Tbs sugar
• 2 (28 oz) cans crushed tomatoes
• 2 cups fat-free half-and-half (optional)

Method:

1. Add olive oil to a sauce pan. Heat over medium heat.
2. When oil is hot, add diced/minced** ingredients (onions, green pepper, celery, carrot, and garlic). Add salt and pepper and Italian seasoning. Saute until tender, about 5 minutes.
3. Add chicken broth and turn heat to medium-high. Bring to a simmer/soft boil and leave the broth to reduce (at least 20 minutes).
4. Add tomatoes and sugar. Stir, let cook a few minutes, and taste.
5. This is a key step. Adjust seasonings. Don't be afraid to go a little wild. Add some more rosemary, thyme, and oregano. Add some more salt. Add a bay leaf if you have some time. Maybe add some red chili flakes. Man, I'm not an expert. Just do what you want here, as long as it tastes good. Also, this is a good time to test for acidity. If the sauce is too acidic, add some more sugar.
6. Let whole thing simmer for about 30 minutes. Technically, it's ready to go as soon as it's warm enough, but you want to give all those flavors time to get to know one another and share their final regrets and say goodbye or whatever before you eat them.
7. Add half-and-half, if you're using it. I like it because I'm a sucker for dairy proteins that human beings aren't meant to digest, but I've always been one to make bad decisions that just taste so good. Stir.

So that's that! Yum. Now I am going to eat.

**Mincing and dicing are technically different. When you dice something, you are cutting it into uniformly-shaped pieces that are at least 1/4-inch in size. Mincing is much smaller, about 1/8-inch or less in size, and since the pieces are so small, it doesn't matter if they are uniform or not; they will cook in the same amount of time, regardless. For this recipe, I definitely minced all my veggies, except for *maybe* the onions. It really doesn't matter except that I like my basic marinara to be smoother. Chunky sauce is delicious, but if I were making chunky sauce, I'd go balls-to-the-wall and add mushrooms, zucchini, etc.

Just an idea of how I *minced* my ingredients and the ratio of onion to everything else.