Quick and Easy Homemade Marinara Sauce

02.07.14

After one taste of this quick and easy homemade marinara sauce, you’ll never buy another jar of it again, I promise you!

The spring of 2005 wasn’t an easy time for me. I was 20 years old and was pursuing a major I wasn’t passionate about. I thought I wanted to be a dietician, despite my anguish over chemistry and biology, and was knee-deep in 16 credits worth of geometry and molecular biology. I was partying far too frequently with the too many friends I had on campus, had a new boyfriend every other week and was completely and utterly lost. I truly felt sad, lonely and scared for the first time in my life. I knew if I kept going down the path I was on, I wouldn’t graduate and I’d be a drop-out with a drinking problem. So, after doing some research online, I had an epiphany.

I called my parents, sobbing hysterically, and told them that I needed to move and attend a different college. I hated who I was and where I was going, and to really succeed, I needed to leave. After a few scares earlier that year involving my reckless ways, they happily obliged. My dad forked over the money for the applications and I applied to 2 schools, each of them over 750 miles away from where I currently sat. After just a few short weeks, I found out I was accepted to one of them, Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. Neither of my parents had heard of it, but both were equally excited to get me out of the hole I dug myself into.

Fast forward 3 months into my fall semester in Georgia and I’m completely homesick. I went from having hundreds of friends at my side to having two, both of which had a life outside of me. One very homesick weekend, both of my roommates had left, and I was completely alone. Instead of going out to the bars, where the girls looked like country stars and the boys only noticed them, I stayed in. Instead of ordering yet another Hungry Howie’s pizza, I decided to make spaghetti and meatballs. A simple dinner that always made me feel like I was at home with my mom as she tossed the pasta into the boiling water and mixed the meatballs together with her hands. So the next hour and a half, I sat by the stove watching as the sauce simmered, tossing in herbs, salt and pepper as the bubbles gently popped when they reached the surface. I mixed pork and beef with diced onions and garlic to create perfectly little meatballs to sit on top of my pasta.

My first bite tasted like home. It wasn’t as good as my mothers, but it brought me that much closer to her anyway. Instead of feeling sad and lonely, I felt happy. It was the first time in my life that I actually felt how powerful food can be. How it can ignite memories of happiness and security with just one bite. Now, I know this wasn’t my best sauce (by far), but in that moment, I had never tasted anything so good.

I have always, always loved food, but it was that plate of spaghetti and meatballs that really showed me how much food can also love you back in the moments where you feel like nothing else does.