Ever made a recipe that you found on Pinterest or a blog, only to have it be a big flop? Yep, that happened to me last night.

One of my favorite blogs had a recipe for creamy pumpkin spaghetti, which sounded amazing, and looked better still. So, I made it for dinner, and the sauce came out a liquidy mess. I triple and quadruple checked the recipe to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake, but nope. There must have been a typo somewhere in the recipe.

I grabbed an extra jar of pumpkin puree to thicken the sauce, and that got dinner on the table, but it wasn’t the amazing dish that I’d been anticipating all afternoon. Bummer.

It did get me thinking, though. Surely, I could come up with a pumpkin tomato sauce that was all the things I had expected that one to be. A sauce with the gorgeous color and creamy texture of pumpkin and the savory goodness of a tomato-based sauce.

Yep, I could do that. And while I was at it, I’d also make sure there wasn’t anything fussy about the recipe. It would be something with minimal ingredients and minimal cook time. It would contain ingredients that most people have on hand, and it wouldn’t leave little bits of ingredients left over. If it required opening a can of something, I’d make sure the whole can went into the recipe. In short, it would be the kind of recipe that I look for.

And that’s how I found myself in the kitchen today, making batch after batch of sauce, until I landed on the winner. And oh boy, is it a winner. My new pumpkin tomato sauce recipe has a gorgeous color and texture, and it melds the pumpkin and tomato flavors beautifully. It’s jam-packed with nutrients, too; so it’s something you can feel good about feeding your family. Oh, and did I mention it takes less than 30 minutes to make? Yep, definitely a winner.

But don’t take my word for it. Make it, and see for yourself. [Read more…]