TRANSCRIPTION

SAUCE FOR THE PANTRY

This week we are focusing on spaghetti sauce, pasta sauce, marinara sauce, whatever you wanna call it. Also included in this is Alfredo sauce and Pesto sauce. if it is shelf-stable. Don’t worry about refrigerated stuff. Right now we’re just looking at stuff for your pantry. So, for instance, the Pesto sauce that I normally get is from Costco and it needs to be in the fridge. So I wouldn’t focus on pesto sauce this week. I’m just going to focus on anything that can sit in a jar in my pantry. I’m gonna focus and talk mainly about spaghetti or marinara sauce, but just know that this also applies to Alfredo, Pesto, anything that you would typically put on your pasta.

JARS/CANS OR HOMEMADE

So you can either go with jars here or cans, however your favorite brand comes packaged, or you can go with the homemade side. I actually do a mixture in our daily lives. I sometimes use jarred and sometimes I make it from scratch. I would encourage you to choose one and focus on just one of those this week.

CHOOSE

For me, it would be jarred. I use jars more often than making it from scratch. I only make it from scratch usually when I’m making lasagna. It’s like this weird thing that I do. I don’t know why. It’s just part of my lasagna recipe, I think, and that’s why. So if you’re like me and you only make it from scratch every once in a while, and you do have a recipe for that, that’s great. Let’s hold off on that and let’s just stock up on jars this week because that’s gonna be our focus. I do not recommend trying to split this budget between jarred and homemade. So choose the one that you do the most and we’re gonna go with that this week.

IF YOU’RE GOING WITH HOMEMADE…

Make sure you are getting all of the ingredients if you’re doing the homemade route. So not just some cans of tomato sauce and tomato paste, but get all of the ingredients that go in it, including the spices. So if you use Italian blend, if you use salt and pepper we’ve already purchased, but any other oregano, parsley, anything like that; you do need to get that this week.

That’s part of the budget for making your own, because those are all included in a jar. It comes ready to roll. So whatever ingredients are in your personal homemade recipe, you are going to get all of those and make sure you have all of them. And then several of the tomato sauce, tomato paste, the things that would go the fastest. If you’re buying a little spice jar of oregano, one thing of oregano is probably gonna last for several recipes of this homemade sauce. So you only need one of the spices, most likely, and then the rest of it would be spent on tomato sauce, paste, whatever you use as your base for the sauce.

FILE IT FOR LATER

If you are like me and you do a little bit of both, if you use jarred and homemade, I would go with the jars this week, and then if there’s another week, chances are there will be a handful of weeks throughout this course (or you may have already experienced it) where you just don’t eat that item that I’m recommending that you get. And so THAT would be a perfect week to go back and think, oh, I did get jarred spaghetti sauce. Now I’m gonna get the ingredients for my homemade stuff for this week, and I’m gonna sub it in for something, even if it’s completely different. If it’s something you’re not gonna eat and there isn’t a really great sub option, then this would be a really great thing to just kind of keep in the back of your mind. You might wanna write it in your notes section in the printable or whatever you wanna do to remember that this is something that you could definitely beef up because you kind of only did half the equation.

If you only do jars or only do homemade, then you’ve got it easy. You don’t have to remember that. But like I said, it’s just great to be taking notes along the way, of things that either you ran out of budget for, or that you would like to beef up more, or that could have been split just like this one: store bought or homemade.

THAT’S A WRAP!

That’s it. That is your item this week. Spaghetti sauce, marinara sauce, pasta sauce, however you wanna word it. And your budget is $35 and that’s it. Have a wonderful week!