Recipe - Chunky Meaty Tomato Sauce

While the north has been all about sub-zero temperatures and snow, snow, snow, we've had our share of yucky weather too!  Okay, so sticky, humid, rainy days aren't that horrible but when you live in the Sunshine State you feel gypped when you have a blah day.  Beaver and I bought a propane patio heater with our Christmas money and had really expected to have toasty times on the back deck this winter, but those evenings have been rare.  It's just been very rainy.  Is there even a dry season in Florida?  I do not know.

During these tough weather weeks, a hearty dinner is in order.  I followed a very vague guideline for making homemade spaghetti sauce and built it around a pound of ground (oooh I'm a poet!) buffalo meat (aka bison) that I had ready to use in the refrigerator.  So you know what?  The sauce was awesome!  How awesome was it?  It was so awesome that I'm sharing it with you now.  If you do the math you'll see how wholesome this sauce is too.  Also under 300 mg sodium, for those of you who are counting.  You're welcome.

Beaver's rocket-arm serving technique whips that pasta up and right onto his plate at lightning speed.

Chunky Meaty Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

1 can Hunt's diced spicy red pepper tomatoes, drained

1 can Hunt's diced basil, garlic & oregano tomatoes, drained

4 plum tomatoes. seeded and cut into large chunks

1 small onion, peeled and cut into chunks

1/2 bell pepper (red or green), seeded and cut into chunks

1 clove garlic, peeled

1 pound ground buffalo meat

Procedure

Set your burner to medium high and preheat your pan a minute or two.  Buffalo meat is very lean so you may want to spray with Pam first.  Brown the meat, breaking it up with a fork, until mostly cooked.  Leave a few bits of pink if you can because the meat will continue to cook in the sauce.

For the sauce: 

Put the garlic clove in your food processor and pulse to mince it.  Pour in the diced tomatoes and pulse a few times until they are pureed but still chunky.  Add the cut up tomatoes, onion and pepper and pulse until they are diced.  

When the ground buffalo is finished cooking, pour the sauce into the same pan (there shouldn't be any fat to drain off) and bring to a simmer.  Cover and let simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve over whole wheat pasta.

Serves 4.