This is the marinara sauce I used on that deee-licious meat-ish balls wrap the other day. Mushroom marinara sauce is not E approved, because it has mushrooms, and mushrooms are on E’s Forbidden Foods list. But this month, we’re going our separate ways in the kitchen. I’m vegan, he’s not.

I’ve learned a lot during this vegan challenge so far. One lessons is that you’ve gotta be real creative with the condiments to survive veganism. Roasted vegetables, beans and tortilla wraps are fine, but you’ve got to have some sort of wet, gooey, sweet, spicy or flavored edible glue of some sort to keep a sandwich together. Or to smother a bowl of pasta in. Or to make quinoa not taste like gravel. When I made pasta the other night (at first I tried to make a whole wheat spaghetti, but then had to abort and go with an organic linguini because the wheat pasta contained egg whites), this mushroom marinara sauce was the most delicious, flavorful sauce to pair with it.

Marinara sauce is really the easiest thing on the planet, and it can be made with any flavors or vegetables or spices you like. Everyone has a recipe, but this is what I did, on a lazy Sunday at approximately 4:53 PM, when it first started to snow and the football game was on and E was on the couch prepping to make something involving duck breast that was decidedly not vegan. No worries, my sauce was so good, even mushroom-averse E licked a little sauce off of my spoon.

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