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Sunday, January 18, 2009

Pasta Sauce Alternative

During my last trip to Trader Joe's, I found their private label Organic Marinara Sauce with no salt added. It's not sodium-free, but very low (25 mg per 1/2 cup). It was a little watery and had a more subtle taste than the typical bottled sauce, but hey, it's not bad when you don't have much time and you need to whip up a meal for the family (I typically like to make my own sauce from scratch, but seldom have time to do so). I added dried oregano & basil, a little crushed red pepper flakes and some no-sodium salt substitute (Morton's). The overall taste turned out pretty good, and the sauce stuck to the pasta well. As an accompaniment, I made some turkey meat balls.

For the meat balls, I used a pound of ground turkey, panko bread crumbs, black pepper, no-sodium salt substitute, dried oregano & basil, parmesan cheese, and one egg. After browning the mini meat balls (about 1-1.5 inches in diameter) in some grape seed oil on the stove top, I threw them in the oven and broiled them for about 15-20 minutes (in retrospect, they would've been less dry if they were baked instead).

All this yielded 3 decent-sized portions of pasta.