Pizza Sauce

The Secret's in the Sauce

So I made pizza yesterday (dough here) and it is so good. There's just nothing quite like homemade goodness. For about half of the flour I used whole wheat pastry flour and it is so good! You really need to try whole wheat pastry flour (thanks SherBear).

I think that it is really important to put a good sauce on the pizza. My best concoction thus far is mixing tomato paste (you don't even need to cook it) with water, italian spices (or spices of your choice), some salt (doesn't need to be very salty due to the salty cheese that will top it), pepper, and garlic powder, perhaps some onion powder too.

Have you ever noticed how delicious tomato paste is? It tastes like sweet ripe tomatoes. Tomato sauce, on the other mano (hand), has quite a less appealing flavor and many-a-times I have avoided putting it into recipes as I am afraid it will ruin the food with its flavor. To use as pizza sauce (I put tomato paste into everything), you can add as little or as much water as you would like, depending on your preferred thickness. Whenever I have not had sufficient time or no tomato paste and used some sauce from a jar, the pizza was not very good at all. I don't even want to think about it (shudder of disgust). But, with this sauce, it is so yummy.

I love cooking. And baking. It's so therapeutic. It's like going for a run, but much easier (usually), with a much more delicious end product. Gives you time to think things through, to be creative, to create something wonderful from so many different regular every day things (flour, salt, etc.). It's quite amazing. If I eat something I want it to be very delicious, carefully put together, with real ingredients that are natural/meant to be eaten. I hate going out to eat and it seems the cooks don't even taste their food most of the time. Luckily with school right now I have no money to eat out so I don't have this problem. I don't even want to eat out though. I would rather try to make it myself. It's so much better and tastes fresh. I have less and less tolerance for premade foods. Perhaps I'm becoming a food snob.

My next feat will be to grow my own food...may try to plant some things this year. Part of me wants to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere and grow all of my own food. Can you see it? One of those old country homes with a large porch, a swinging bench, the family sits out and watches the stars on summer evenings (while eating homemade treats). Maybe I have just seen Field of Dreams one too many times. I don't know how I got through freshman year in the dorms at the cannon center, but I really didn't even mind it. We had plenty of choices I guess. Ever since sophomore year I have cooked most meals, partly because of my dislike of spending money in general, and partly because it tastes so good, and it feels good to cook. Cook! Families that cook together stay together?...likely