Super-Tasty Meat Sauce for Whole Foods 5% Day

Every now and then, I get to combine my passion for good food with the community building work we do at the local nonprofit organization, Social Capital Inc. (SCI). This coming Wednesday, January 15, Whole Foods Market Woburn will be hosting one of their special "5% Days", whereby 5% of the net sales gets donated to a local charity--in this case, SCI. This will support SCI's work to build social capital to foster youth success and healthy communities. SCI carries out this work in our hometown of Woburn and throughout Eastern Massachusetts, where we currently serve 12 communities.

Now, I could simply encourage those of you in the area to head over to Whole Foods Market Woburn on Wednesday to support a good cause, and leave it at that. But I thought it would be fun to share some recipe ideas and tips for things you might want to pick up when you head over to Whole Foods on Wednesday. Perhaps I should be extolling the virtues of the filet mignon and truffles to maximize revenue--those are great to be sure if you are so inclined! However, if you're like our family, you might be thinking in the new year about how to eat healthy while staying within budget. In fact, I just wrote about 8 Steps for Feeding Your Family Well and Under Budget. One point I'd highlight is the value of checking out the store flyer before heading to the store. I look at the Whole Foods Facebook page for weekly specials and keep my eye on their Twitter and Instragram feeds @wfm_woburn for late breaking specials and ideas.

I conferred with local Whole Foods marketing team leader Jon Latessa about ideas for this post, and he suggest focusing on their 365 Everyday Value® pantry items, as that is certainly a great way to stock your kitchen with healthy food at a good price. He offered to put together a bag of these items for me, and see what I could come up with for recipes. Sounded like fun!

my mystery Whole Foods Market bags!

Well, a well-stuffed Whole Foods bag with some mystery ingredients is much better than a Christmas stocking for this foodie! I set out the items and began cooking up some ideas. It was after 5:30 at the end of a busy week, so for last night I figured I'd focus on some familiar terrain, and save the items that might stretch the creativity more for later in the weekend (stay tuned!). A value pack of 85% Lean Ground Beef and 365 Organic Crushed Tomatoes, along with a couple jars of dried organic herbs, seemed to call out for a meat sauce!

I make meat sauce pretty often here, especially in the winter. I tend to have the key ingredients on hand--I usually have canned tomatoes and often some ground beef in the freezer. But in the spirit of the mystery bag challenge, I wanted to mix it up a bit. I was glad I did, as this sauce came out great! A good sign was Jodi, who appreciate good food but doesn't tend to be super-curious about the cooking process, asked after a few bites, "Mmm, what did you put in this sauce?".

Well, you can see the full ingredient list below, but I'd say the keys were high-quality beef and tomatoes, along with the spice blend that was in the bag. I noted the blend was comprised of roasted garlic (yum!) and organic mushrooms...I correctly thought this would add an interesting flavor profile to the sauce! Also, I often use whole canned tomatoes, but I think the crushed version really helped that great tomato flavor burst forth. Now, I'm a fan of people trying their own versions of things, but if you are able to get over to Whole Foods, I'd really encourage you to go with as many of the items I mention as you can, because this really was a notch above our typical sauce in terms of flavor. Okay, enough preliminaries, on to the recipe! (note: I simply refer to "365" items as shorthand for the Whole Foods Market "365 Everyday Value®" product line.

Ingredients
1 medium onion, chopped

a key ingredient!

1/2 of a medium carrot, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 or 2 tbsp 365 Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 lb or so ground beef--I used the 85% Lean Ground Beef, which the prepare each day at Whole Foods. Note: for a sauce I would not go with the super lean versions, you want a little fat content for flavor.
1.5 tsp Organic Healthy Earth Seasonings spice blend for meat, seafood and veggies
salt at that time
1/2 cup stock or wine (I used leftover homemade chicken stock I had on hand)
healthy pinch red pepper flakes
28 oz can 365 Organic Crushed Tomatoes with Basil
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/2 tsp dried basil
1 tbsp tomato paste
dash 365 Aged Balsamic Vinegar
1 lb. 365 Whole Wheat Elbows
Grated Parmesan cheese to serve at the table

Heat the olive oil in a medium pan. Add the onions, cook on medium heat until they begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the carrots, cook another few minutes, then stir in the garlic. Cook for another minute or so, then add the ground beef.

Break up the beef with a sturdy spoon, then sprinkle in the Earth Seasonings spice blend. Stir the beef and spice blend to combine with the onion mixture. Cook the beef until it is browned, stirring occasionally. This will take 5 minutes or so. Stir in the stock or wine* and bring to a simmer.

After the broth has been mostly absorbed, stir in the tomatoes. Once the tomatoes have been mixed in well with the beef and onion mixture, stir in the rosemary, dried basil and tomato paste. Now, you simply let the pan simmer for at least 30 minutes (OK, it would probably taste pretty good after 15 to 20 minutes, but the flavors deepen the longer it cooks). I simmered it for about 45 minutes. Stir in the balsamic vinegar about 5 to 10 minutes before you intend to serve the sauce.

The simmering time give you a chance to get a salad ready and to cook the pasta. I typically make my own dressing but do like to keep a prepared one in the fridge for when I'm in a pinch. I hadn't tried the 365 Herbes de Provence so I figured I'd simply combine some mixed greens with some red peppers, a few dried cranberries and some Parmesan cheese. This made for a simple, tasty salad with the herby dressing.

Start boiling the water for pasta about 20 minutes before you want to eat. Cook the pasta according to package instructions. When it's almost ready, reserve about 1/4 cup of the cooking water. Then drain the pasta, and gradually add the cooked pasta to the sauce, stirring it in as you go with a bit of the reserved water. Some folks like to eat salad first, but I prefer to have the pasta with the salad. So I plate the pasta to leave plenty of room for those good leafy greens, and serve! Pour a glass of your favorite Italian red wine and you've got a great meal!

*Note: I typically use wine for meat sauce, but seeing the 365 Vegetable Broth in my bag from Whole Foods  gave me the idea of using some of the stock I already had on hand--keeping the container for another time soon! Not sure the extent to which doing the broth over wine helped the overall flavor result, so I will continue to experiment.

Full disclosure: Some of the 365 Everyday Value ingredients were provided to me by Whole Foods Market Woburn in a "Mystery Bag" as complimentary samples for this post--but I had a number of the basic 365 items already on hand from my previous shopping! Writing a post like this is not expected of charities participating in the 5% program; it's something I chose to do to share some healthy and tasty cooking ideas while spreading the word about this event to help the SCI cause. Not to mention the ideas of cooking up some recipe ideas with some great surprise ingredients sounded like a lot of fun!