We do love to have Friday night Pizza and a Movie nights in this household. With five kids, the biggest thing to do is to get lots of food, and to find a movie everyone enjoys.
This recipe is for a fairly simple pizza sauce, but one that definitely includes plenty of veggies. It is one way to sneak some extra vegetables into my husband (my children don’t need to be fooled!) Feel free to adjust what you add based on what you have on hand. I use other bell pepper colors, and I usually use far more garlic. If you skip the carrot, you may need to add some sugar.
My usual crust is one I make in my bread machine, but this time, I used Spinach wraps from the regular Wrap package through Bountiful Baskets. My family declared this is the way to use Spinach wraps from now on.
Ingredients
- 10 Roma tomatoes (2.5-3 pounds)
- 1 green bell pepper
- 1 carrot, peeled
- 1 medium onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 T Italian seasoning
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 3 T olive oil
Instructions
- Coarsely dice tomatoes, after removing the cores. I use seeds, skins and all.
- Chop remaining veggies finely.
- In a large saucepan, saute bell pepper and onion in the olive oil for a few minutes. Add remaining ingredients and bring to boil.
- Reduce heat to a simmer, and let it simmer uncovered for about 30 minutes.
- At that point, I use an immersion blender in the saucepan to smooth out the sauce some. For a smoother sauce, you may want to use a regular blender, and process in batches.
- Return to saucepan, and let simmer uncovered for another 30 minutes or longer.
- Leftover sauce can be refrigerated for about a week.
I like a fairly chunky sauce, and we prefer a lot of it — especially in a week where topping options are a bit limited. I used three wraps as crusts, and used all the sauce. You can add whatever toppings you prefer. My guys like a meat-lovers style. I’d prefer mushrooms, and black and green olives.
The best part, besides everyone tripping over each other in the kitchen, is sitting down to a movie. We have lots of family favorites, but one of them is Sahara, the 2005 release based on a Clive Cussler novel. We like Dirk Pitt and the adventure of looking for a Civil War submarine in Africa is just fun.
This isn’t necessarily a great movie for young kids, but it has spawned a lot of “family sayings” for us. “I don’t wanna rain on your crazy parade, buddy, but I don’t think we can fix this thing,” is something we say when something looks completely impossible. “So I was just wondering when we’re gonna have to sit down and re-evaluate our decision-making paradigm?” gets shortened, but even the 9-year-old talks about “re-evaluating our decision-making paradigm” when what we are doing does not seem to be giving us the results we want. And the music is fun.
My favorite scene involves Dirk and Eva in a market setting. He’s telling her about some angel-wing clams and how this river is the only place they are found. When in the water, they glow in the dark and science cannot explain why. Dirk’s line then is “My theory is that they do it because they can.”
Because they can. Isn’t that a great reason for doing things?
That pizza sauce sounds delicious. I’ll have to look for the movie, too. I love the line about the crazy parade, but I should probably watch the movie before I start using it.