{Fussworthy Food} Tomato-free Pasta Sauce

My kids love pasta. However, sauce from a jar offers neither the nutritional content nor the creativity I feel are essential to any meal.

Lately, Lei isn't into "red sauce" and has been asking for buttered noodles. To add some life to her request, I came up with this tomato-free pasta sauce. It's much like the pasta bombs I describe here.

The following recipe makes enough super healthy pasta sauce to feed two kids dinner now and make 12 pasta bombs for later.

Ingredients:

2 medium-large sweet potatoes

3 large handfuls fresh spinach

1 large shallot

1/2 medium vidalia onion

1/2 pound shitake mushrooms

Beaba Babycook or steamer and food processor

butter

chicken broth

noodles

Penzey's Sunny Paris (spice blend of purple shallots, chives, green peppercorn, French basil, French terragon, chervil, bay leaf and dill weed)

Italian sausage (optional - I did not add sausage this time)

parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Peel and chop sweet potatoes. Steam or cook until soft. Puree until smooth. Set aside.

2. Chop onion, shallot and mushrooms.

3. Drop a few tablespoons of butter into a sauce pan on high heat. Sautee onion, shallots and mushrooms until softened and slightly browned.

4. Wash and dry spinach. Add spinach to the sauce pan and wilt it while stirring.

5. Stir in 1-2 teaspoons of Penzey's Sunny Paris.

6. Once your saucepan vegetables are thoroughly heated and mixed in, you are ready to blend your sauce.

7. Depending on your food processor's capacity, you may need to blend your sauce in multiple batches. Pour the saucepan vegetable mix into the processor, add chicken broth and blend until smooth. Add chicken broth to desired consistency.

8. Once you have finished blending the saucepan vegetable mix, pour the blend back into the saucepan and add the sweet potato puree to it.

9. Add butter and salt to taste.

10. Boil water and cook your noodles al dente.

11. Serve with grated or shaved parmesan cheese.

12. Freeze the rest of the batch in silicone muffin molds.

Save in a freezer safe bag or container. Throw one or two into warm noodles or add to jar pasta sauce or mac n cheese to add flavor and nutritional value any time.

Check out this previous post for a detailed description of pasta bombs.