As I shared in this post, the first step toward living a simple life is not purging your closets or getting chickens or even starting a garden, but to start in the kitchen. Read the other posts in this series here.
One of the ways I’ve worked at bringing simplicity to my life is with meal planning. Knowing ahead of each evening what we’ll be eating relieves SO much of my mental load, and has [almost] eliminated the “what’s for dinner?” question someone always asks. (“Go check the meal plan!” I say.)
To take it a step further, many of our days even have “themes” — Taco Tuesday, Movie Night Friday, Pizza Saturday. (Spoiler: This is one of the things I share about in my ebook 5 Ways to Bring Simplicity and Rest to Your Everyday Life, available to you for FREE here!)
For our family, 98% of the time we have some form of pasta on Mondays. Rotating through spaghetti and meatballs, baked tortellini, red sauce beef lasagna, white sauce chicken lasagna, fettuccine Alfredo, chicken parmesan, stroganoff — any recipe involving noodles! — we can go months without having the same meal twice.
Thankfully pasta is something every one of my kids enjoys (I can’t say the same for my variety of Taco Tuesdays), AND it makes great leftovers for lunches the rest of the week. My 10 year old has been known to bring pasta to school and eat it cold for lunch…
During the upcoming tomato and canning season I hope to experiment with red sauce recipes, looking for something that mimics (or is better than) our favorite jarred spaghetti sauce. In the meantime, we have completely given up jarred Alfredo sauce in favor of the recipe below.
One batch is enough sauce to go with a pound of pasta like fettuccine (though our family prefers linguine noodles), or one 9×13 lasagna recipe. It is not safe to can, though I suppose it could be frozen — but it comes together so quickly I don’t see the need to make more than enough for one meal at a time.
Simple Alfredo Sauce
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter
- 2-3 cloves garlic minced
- 1/2 Tb salt
- 1/2 cup flour
- 3 cups half & half
- 2 Tb Italian seasoning
- 2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- In a medium saucepan, melt butter over low heat.
- Turn heat up to medium and add minced garlic. Whisk for 1-2 minutes, until aromatic but not browned.
- Quickly stir in salt and flour to make a roux, then slowly add half & half while whisking.
- Add Italian seasoning and Parmesan cheese. Continue whisking, making sure to scrape the bottom corners of the pan where the cheese will try to collect.
- Simmer until thickened to desired consistency (see note below).
Notes
Does your family love pasta like mine does? What’s your favorite recipe that includes Alfredo sauce?
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