{"id":2697,"date":"2014-05-05T08:19:33","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T00:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.com\/?p=2697"},"modified":"2014-05-05T08:19:33","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T00:19:33","slug":"homemade-pasta-sauce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=2697","title":{"rendered":"Homemade Pasta Sauce"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Yesterday was spent entirely at home working on school stuff; a cerebral day I’d say. For a mental break, I made a tomato-based pasta sauce from scratch.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t difficult, really. All I did was cut up and diced four medium sized tomatoes, put them in a pot, added about 400ml of water and some vegetable stock, some freshly grounded black pepper, salt, sliced mushrooms, dried rosemary and dried thyme. I used a potato masher to mash as much of the tomatoes as possible, and then set this mixture to boil. At boiling point, I brought the heat down and left the mixture to simmer for another 10 minutes or so, leaving the fire to do its work in bringing out the fragrance and flavours of the tomatoes and herbs. <\/p>\n

When it was done, I added the sauce to the fresh tortellini I had bought from the supermarket, and for greens, I plonked in some asparagus. And that was dinner, and will also be lunch for today. <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The other day I was speaking to a fellow Singaporean lady working in HK and she was saying she had put on weight in HK because she eats out all the time. Then I asked why doesn’t she just cook for herself. She then went on to say, oh she is on her own in HK and she has to work from Monday to Friday, so that validates her not cooking. I then said to her, “Hey, um exactly the same as you. I live on my own here and I work every day as well. But I bring my own lunch to work and I cook stuff that’s quick and easy to make.” <\/p>\n

From her reaction, I knew she had thought I was some taitai who didn’t have to work and could just spend my time cooking all day. After she realised I wasn’t, she said, “Yeah, I really should start cooking for myself.”<\/p>\n

So it just boils down to laziness, isn’t it? Anyway I have concluded that there is no such thing as no time if something is important enough to you. For myself, I enjoy cooking and I like knowing what goes into my food. I also feel a small sense of accomplishment when I can create and improvise a dish, adding my own twists to stuff I cook. Like exercise, it’s a form of destressing. I have also begun to appreciate how my brain and tongue have come to understand the way certain ingredients and food items work or do not work well together. I now know how I can play with the tastes of ingredients without having to taste them. <\/p>\n

It’s too bad most people in the modern world of cconvenience don’t cook more for themselves. They don’t know the fun, health and knowledge they are missing out on!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was spent entirely at home working on school stuff; a cerebral day I’d say. For a mental break, I made a tomato-based pasta sauce from scratch. It wasn’t difficult, really. All I did was cut up and diced four … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[113,222,223,74],"class_list":["post-2697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-musings-mullings","tag-homecooking","tag-pasta","tag-sauce","tag-vegetarian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2698,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2697\/revisions\/2698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}