We, like most families, are very much trying to trim back on our spending budget. We are a family of five and our food spending had crept up to over £100 per week, much too much for us to sustain. As part of our efforts to trim the spend we set out a weekly menu plan and shop according to the meals we have planned for. In our store cupboard you will now find Sainsbury's Basics curry sauce, 9p a jar and Tesco Value Pasta Sauce, the latest I bought was 26p. I know I should make these sauces from scratch myself but time limitations caused by working full time mean that I need the ready prepared sauces to prepare the main meals, also I doubt very much if I could make these sauces for the same price as the big stores are selling them.

Monday night is pasta night and we use our Tesco Value Sauce on a regular basis. The glass jar has contents of 440g and I can comfortably feed my family with this amount of sauce. One of the main reasons the sauce appeals to me is that it is smooth. The sauce is "a tomato based pasta sauce with mixed herbs", it has no lumpy bits, my children hate lumpy bits, they like vegetables but they eat them separate to the sauce, mainly peppers and courgette, they don't like onions or mushrooms. Basically I divide the jar in two, half for my husband and me and the other half for the children. With the half for us I add it to chopped vegetables: peppers, mushrooms, courgette, and onions. I cook the vegetables by dry frying in the pan and then a couple of minutes before serving I add the pasta sauce just to heat through. What I don't like about this sauce is that I find it quite sweet, probably the reason why my children like it so much. To get rid of the sweetness I add a little bit of tabasco, it gives it just a little kick. Sometimes I add diced bacon or even chorizo but we usually eat it without meat.

My youngest child is only two and pasta is his favourite food, most nights he just eats plain cooked pasta for his dinner, sometimes I open a jar of this sauce and use it to add to his meals, I use some of the sauce from the jar and then store the rest in the fridge, it can be kept for 3 days in the fridge once opened.

This sauce has 22kcal per 100g, which is very good, however it has quite a high sugar content 1.8g per 100g. The sauce is a good colour of red and you can see the little bits of herbs throughout, it smells pleasant, you get a definite whiff of oregano when you open the jar. The jar is a screw top and is quite easy to open, it also has the distinctive Tesco Value logo etc on the labelling. All in all this jar does what it is supposed to it is a good basic pasta sauce and could be used for other dishes such as chilli, or lasagne. It is a sauce that appeals to my whole family and is very good value for money, available in Tesco. We will continue to use this sauce.