That Class and Tomato Sauce

My Contemporary Nursing Class is this amorphous blob of a class taught by two very different instructors. Neither instructor ever talks to the other instructor or that's how it seems. It gets worse (remember, this is the class where they gave everyone $20? I asked, "How bad could it be?"..): it's held in a room with no windows. The room is painted stark white and the starkness is interupted by smudges on the wall. I don't clean my floors very often, but I got some sort of good housekeeping diploma (suitable for framing) when my floors were compared to the floor in this classrooom. I think the coffee cup lids are actually permanently imbedded in floor-scum. I'm afraid to put my backpack down. It may never come up again, but the room is so crowded, well, I have no choice. There is a constant hum from the cheap-ass flourescent lights above and there's an almost imperceptable machine-whine from the computer monitor that assists The World's Dullest Teacher in displaying her Power Point (is that one word?) slides w/ perky old-fashioned traingle-hat wearing nurse images tucked into corners and what may (or may not) be an outline of what WDT is blahblahblahhing about up there. Oh, right. It's either about Florence Nightengale, Don't Date Your Patients, or The Nursing Process, but it all blends into the hum and the whine and the scum and the windlowlessness so she could be reading from the phonebook and I'd be equally engaged. The woman next to me writes on her notebook, "Kill Me Now" and angles it my way.

And then there's the tomato sauce. Those are san marzano tomatoes from the farmers market. And This Is The Best Sauce Ever:

8 to 12 tomatoes or so
Small onion: chopped real fine
2 cloves o' garlic: smashed or pressed
2 Tablespoons of fresh basil
splash of olive oil
salt and pepper
dash of red pepper flakes

Saute onion and garlic in splash of olive oil until softened (I dunno, five minutes)
Peel tomatoes by immersing them in boiling water for 10 seconds and then peeeling skin off with your fingers. Ouch to you if you have any cuts on your fingers, but it makes the sauce better to not have curls of tomato skin in it. Seed the tomatoes by cutting them in half and scooping out the seeds w/ your finger. Whir the seedless, skinless tomatoes in your blender or food processor until smooth (or chop it in chunks if you want a chucky sauce). Add the tomatoes to the onion. Add the basil, salt, pepper and red pepper and let this simmer over low heat for 20 minutes or so until thickened and tasty. This is so good over pasta w/ scraping of parmesan and it's fabulous in calzones if allowed to thicken appropriately. Even better, let the sauce sit in the fridge overnight and re-heat it. Now you're talking!

These tomatoes came from Tip Top Produce. The farmer who grew them just killed herself at age 38 and this will probably be the last sauce I make w/ her enormously delicious tomatoes. So very sad.