Wannabegan Cooked! ANGEL HAIR WITH TOMATO AND BASIL

You know I don't really cook, but tonight my husband and I cooked for the first time in... a really long time. First time this year for sure (HA! It's only Jan 2) but honestly it was probably a full year or more since I used the stove to heat anything.

But I had three cans of organic tomatoes that are expiring next month (THAT should give you an idea of how often we cook) and I wanted to use them up!  So I found a recipe (when I was searching for it, I mistyped it reciepes, recipie, and reicipe before my husband told me how to spell it) online that used canned tomatoes (it's from the brand of the tomatoes I bought).

Here is the original recipe, and this is what we actually did (which was DELICIOUS!! I'm so proud of us!!):

Ingredients

• Undetermined amount of extra-virgin olive oil 
• 1 large red onion
• 2 pieces of dried chiles from a garden in Indiana
• Undetermined amount of crushed red pepper flakes
• 3 cans (14.5 oz) of organic tomatoes, 2 crushed w/ Basil, and 1 skinned whole plum tomatoes
• 3 cloves garlic (I learned the difference between a clove and a head of garlic the hard way when I was 24) 
• Undetermined amount of freshly ground black pepper and sea salt (an elderly Taiwanese woman gave me a recipe where every quantity was, "If you like X, add more X....)
• Angel hair (capellini) pasta
• 1 small package of fresh oregano

Directions

• Fill your biggest pot 5/8ths full of water and bring to boil (easy!).
• Peel off the outer layer of the onion, and chop off the ends. Use an apple wedge cutting tool to cut the onion into 9 pieces, struggle to chop a few of the slippery wedges with a knife.  Put all of the onion pieces into a blender and struggle to blend the onion. Put all the onion, including the giant unchopped chunks in your second largest pot with some olive oil and stir around. Remember to turn on the burner so the onion gets mushy.
• Intend to open the 2 cans of crushed Tomato with Basil, but actually open 1 can of Tomato with Basil and 1 can of skinned whole plum tomato by accident. Put can of Tomato with Basil back in the cabinet.
• Turn off the boiling water, because it's going to be a while before you're ready to boil the pasta.
• Pour 1/2 can of crushed Tomato with Basil in the blender with the onion and blend briefly on low. Blend the garlic with everything else as well. Pour everything you blended into the second largest pot. 
• Scoop out the whole skinless plum tomatoes out of the pot and blend those as well, then return to the pot.  
• Add some salt, the red pepper flakes, a ton of pepper, and the chiles to the tomatoes.  Strip the oregano leaves off the stems and add those too.  Stir it around while it boils up, then turn the heat down to simmer.
• Bring the big pot of water back to a boil, add some salt and spill half of the dry pasta on the floor (and sweep up then discard). Boil the remaining pasta for 4 minutes.
• Scoop out the pasta into bowls, and then pour some of the tomato sauce you just made on top! Enjoy!

Serves 2, with lots of sauce left over.