Tomato-free Tomato Sauce

When I thought the allergy was tomatoes, it kind of felt like my world was crumbling around me.  You wouldn't believe how many meals include tomatoes in our house, so it was all about re-wiring my brain.  Tacos, spaghetti, and sweet and sour sauce are staples. 

Some of these things are somewhat easy to work around; however, these are mostly in chemical form.  Since heavy creams and parmesan cheese are expensive, pre-made alfredo sauce is the easy and cheap solution for Italian.  Pre-made taco seasonings are tomato free but preservative packed.  While these worked for short term solutions, I thought it might be an idea to find less-chemical laden alternatives.

I started with my parents as guinea pigs, with a home-made taco seasoning (conclusion: I like a taco with some kick, so it's probably best for me to create my own ratios), then with a pepper based tomato-type sauce (which oddly caused me to react, though that could have been due to the extremely high histamine levels in my body, so I may be able to re-introduce peppers soon).

One of the most interesting things I tried was a beet-based tomato-type sauce: No Tomato Pasta Sauce.  It was surprisingly easy to make it, even though I fresh carrots, which added an extra step of boiling them.  I skipped the bay leaf (I forgot to buy them).  The smell was initially off putting, when I started adding things to the blender.  However, after simmering for a couple hours, I was surprised how good it smelled and how good it tasted.  It was even nearing the right colour. Adding my usual over-dosing of chemical laden parmesan cheese, I was surprised how good it was (then again - I have been going through spaghetti withdrawl).

The recipe made A LOT of sauce.  We had enough for supper, lunch , pizza and probably another supper.  Even though there was a minimal taste of beets to begin with, the longer the sauce had to mesh, the less I could even remotely notice them.  The colour did become more and more orange, but that's nothing a few drops of food colouring wouldn't fix, if it was that off putting. 

While it didn't quite work as well with pizza (it wasn't bad, and we couldn't quite place what wasn't working), it was quite god as a pasta sauce.  In a word: hearty.  Scott would have preferred a more sauce-y texture, which could probably be attained by someone using a blender with more patience than myself. 

All in all, I give this recipe a surprising FOUR spoons out of five!

 

My apologies on the craptastic photo... cell phone pic!!