Make your spaghetti healthier, tastier, and stretch farther using fresh, thin sliced carrots and/or thin sliced zucchini. It adds color and flavor to any tomato sauce and kids love it because the tomato disguises the taste of veggies just enough to please their pallet. You will know they are getting their vitamins, and they will know it's still fun to eat! When cooking up the spaghetti sauce, just add a cup of veggies to it and cook till veggies are softened. Fresh is best for flavor, but canned can certainly be used too.
I keep a quart plastic container in the fridge just for leftover cooked veggies for adding to soups or spaghetti sauce. Some veggies work better than others though, so you might want to keep 2 containers going at the same time. One for soups and one for spaghetti sauce. My children would eat almost anything covered in spaghetti sauce and Parmesan cheese. As Dede mentioned in her original post, zucchini or even yellow squash works well in spaghetti sauce and carrots, celery, broccoli, (especially the stems) and pieces of onion are perfect.
I keep mashed potatoes for thickening soups or adding to yeast bread doughs. Nothing sparks up yeast bread like mashed potato. I will often keep the water that I've boiled potatoes in stored in jars for bread making or for thinning out soups or stews. It's loaded with vitamins from the the potatoes, so if you can find a use for it like making gravy or whatever, by all means save it. I've stretched a jar of store-bought spaghetti sauce with a small can of tomato sauce too, just add a tiny bit of sugar to cut the acid and if you have it a dash of garlic powder. Leftover steak or chicken or pork chops are great if you mince them, and use them in spaghetti sauce too. The whole idea is learning to use up every last bit of what you already have that is good for your family.
Thanks for the great post Dede. Julia in Boca Raton, FL
You can add any vegetable you want to spaghetti sauce. My usual choices are onions, carrots, celery, and any left over vegs. Just put in your blender with some of the sauce, and use the chop setting. Makes the pieces of vegetables small, but still nutritious. If your sauce gets too thick, add a little tomato juice or undiluted tomato soup.
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