Confession: I’ve been on a baking/cooking ban for the last several weeks.  Normally, this would never happen because baking is my fun time, my creative time, my me time…..but desperate times call for desperate measures.

1) After the holidays, I was beginning to feel like one of those couches that sits in the “guest living room” of a fancy house: overstuffed, finicky and uncomfortable. Yes, you know the one.  Luckily, my smoothie regimen has helped me to feel human again.

2) My husband is required to stay at peak fitness for his job as a soldier in the Army and he was dangerously close to  (read: over) the limit and I figured if baked goods weren’t around, he couldn’t eat them.

3) I was overwhelmed with all the baking possibilities and out of my depth.  Inundated by all these incredibly complicated-but-delicious sounding and looking dishes (making me wish my computer screen was scratch-n-sniff) being posted out in the blogosphere, I didn’t know what to make of them.  I don’t know how to make an “emulsion” (which sounds vaguely gross) and I don’t want to use a recipe that has 38 different ingredients.  I’m slow to adapt and it all got too complicated too quickly.

I just wanted/needed to make a simple recipe that wasn’t going to clog my arteries.  Oh, and if that recipe could taste delicious too, that would just be fantastic.  I know, I ask for a lot sometimes.

So, it was as though my kitchen dreams were answered when I saw this recipe on SmittenKitchen’s blog. This marinara sauce was everything I was looking for and more.  With only three ingredients (okay, four ingredients if you’re a stickler and you count the salt), it was unbelievably simple to make and the result was way better than my meager preparation warranted.  It was light and flavorful, reminding me how much I’ve always loved spaghetti and making me wonder why I haven’t eaten it in recent memory.

As it turns out, this recipe is also in line with some of the current trends in cooking.  The Fancy Food Show announced five big trends in the food world right now; specifically, “good-for-you foods,” “coconut,” “gluten-free,” “exotic citrus” and “nostalgic foods.”  Well, one of the very few ingredients of this recipe was a whole lot of butter, so “good-for-you” went right out of the pot.  While there is definitely no coconut in the recipe and I’m not sure I could justify a tomato as an “exotic citrus,” the marinara itself is actually gluten-free.  Putting it over a bed of rice or rice/quinoa pasta instead of regular wheat based pasta makes a great gluten-free meal.  Plus, marinara sauce is homey and, like macaroni-and-cheese, jello or popsicles,  a childhood staple.

Re-energized and perhaps, reassured, I can’t wait to get back into the kitchen (not a misogynistic joke) and start experimenting again.  One of the baking trends emerging out of this year’s show was using whole vanilla beans in recipes. Maybe I’ll try one of these great recipes: vanilla bean panna cotta or vanilla bean bread pudding on my next baking adventure!

Which culinary trend are you itching to try these days?

Thanks to @chris, wader and Ben McLeod for the pictures!

~Laura