This recipe is chock full of vegetables, cheese, and marinara sauce.

a cartoon from my webcomic, the rut.

That might not be far-fetched, if an idea from a 21-year-old student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute takes root. When Eben Bayer graduated this month, he held two provisional patents for a lightweight, biodegradable insulation board that is grown using mushroom spores. And he and a fellow student are incorporating a business to develop it.

A tomato sauce is any of a very large number of sauces made primarily out of tomatoes, usually to be served as part of a dish (rather than as a condiment). Tomato sauces are common for meat and vegetables, but they are perhaps best known as sauces for pasta dishes.Tomatoes have a rich flavor, a low liquid content, very soft flesh which breaks down easily, and the right composition to thicken up into a sauce when they are cooked (without the need of thickeners like roux). All of these make them ideal for simple and appealing sauces.The simplest tomato sauces consist just of chopped tomato flesh (with the skins and seeds optionally removed), cooked in a little olive oil and simmered until it loses its raw flavour, and seasoned with salt.Water (or another, more flavorful liquid such as stock or wine) is often added to keep it from drying out too much. Onion and garlic are almost always sauteed at the beginning before the tomato is added. Other seasonings typically include basil, oregano, parsley, and possibly some spicy red pepper or black pepper. Ground or chopped meat is also common.