Cheater Tomato Cream Sauce (still a whole food, still awesomeness)

The theme of December is going to be ease. Say it with me now: "Ease." Ah, doesn't that feel good.

Does anyone else look at Pinterest these days and think the whole world has gone insane? I mean, if I see one more list of interesting, magical, and otherwise clinically insane things that one can do with their elves, I'm going to have to die of parental magic-impairment syndrome. That, or be convicted of it in a court of law. Recently, I saw a post about someone who did something like the elf (which at least has the excuse of coming at an over-the-top-magical time of year AND supposedly inducing your children to good works by watching over their wee shoulders). Except that it was with plastic dinosaurs. And not at Christmas. The dinosaurs would do all kinds of crazy things like make messes and get into trouble--whee. It's great to be a dinosaur. This post concluded with some comment about how they (the parents) were doing it to keep their children's imaginations alive. Back in my day, imagination meant that you--the child--took your plastic dinosaurs and played games with them. Now apparently it means that your parents do random things with them in the middle of the night (which include, but are not limited to getting into bowls of goop, which the parents--presumably--will at some point in the day have to clean up--it kind of blows my mind). But I've digressed.

My point is that my kids will obviously have to live through a magic-less childhood. Not only that, but I am also going to tell you how to cheat on dinner.

Here's how you make this sauce. You take your regular spaghetti sauce. And you add a block of cream cheese. You heat it and mix it and let it melt. The end. It tastes delicious. And fancy. And it's an excellent compliment for pasta with bacon, sweet sausage, seafood, or--my favorite--mushrooms (see above). Normal sauce is great and all, but it's just too acidic to go well with quite so many flavors. This can be part of a ten-minute meal, but it doesn't taste like it. I love that in a food.

Cheater Tomato Cream Sauce
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cost: 2.50
tomato sauce: 1.50,  cream cheese: 1.00

1 can regular tomato sauce (or this delicious and easy homemade sauce)
1 8-oz block of cream cheese

Heat, mix, serve, eat.

PRINTABLE RECIPE--whatever--save yourself the paper; your elf probably made it into hundreds of tiny snowflakes anyway. He must be exhausted.