Homemade Pizza Sauce

So, do you check the expiry date of food products? Are you very rigid with it or do you use it as a guideline? Well, I started off as a very rigid expiry checker and transformed to a milder one over the years. When I started cooking, I was kinda intrigued with this whole idea of checking expiry dates. Though I hadn't done cooking of any sort before marriage, back home I don't remember seeing anybody checking expiry dates while cooking. It's not that we don't care about expiry… I guess our cooking didn't use many items which involved expiry.

Back home, we mostly used fresh produce for cooking. Processed/canned food was very rare those days. Even today, at my parent's place, they hardly use any canned / processed / frozen item. Unlike today, earlier canned / processed items weren't easily available and they were also very expensive. Times have changed and supermarkets are sprouting in almost every nook and corner, so I think processed / canned food has become a staple and checking expiry dates has become a habit.

Every time I check expiry date of food, I'm reminded of an incident that happened during my Plus Two (undergraduate) days.

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One of our friends' son was getting married. Our friends were living in a remote small town kinda place. The bride-to-be, was born and brought up outside India.  As the wedding date neared the groom's mother started getting tensed. She was worried the bride wouldn't be very happy with the usual Kerala food. So with much difficulty and paying a huge amount, she got a whole bunch of processed / canned food. A few days after the wedding, when the newly weds visited them, the proud mother in law (MIL) displayed her stack of processed / canned food to the daughter in law. Daughter in law was so touched at the gesture and happily started checking out the stock. After a min or two, with a shocked face, daughter in law said “Mummy, we need to throw away all  these things, it's all expired a few months ago!” ;) From what I heard, mother in law, had half a mind to retrieve all those things from the garbage after the daughter in law left, not to cook with it, but at least to get some satisfaction from seeing it on her kitchen cupboard for some more time, considering the money and effort she put into it!!!

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Ok, let's come back to our Pizza sauce now. Well, I'm not the kind of person who insists on making everything at home. For me convenience is also a major factor in cooking, at the same I dont want it to cost me so much, health wise and money wise. So whenever I bought ready made pizza sauce, it would go waste after using it just once. It's generally available in big jars and once it's opened you need to finish it within a few days. That's when one of my friends suggested this recipe to me, from Nita Mehta's cookery book.

It's super easy to make and flavour is real good. Also, you can store it for 2-3 weeks in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Good deal, right?

Click Here For Recipe…

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