Jennie, I make sauces of all kinds, many of which don't use tomatoes. I make creamy and cheesy sauces to go with chicken and, as Jos said, sauces with beans or chick peas without a tomato in sight. I can do a killer carbonara, toms excluded. I like variety and, though I love tomatoey sauces, I wouldn't dream of boring Mrs Steve with them night after night. The fact is that Italian cooking does use tomatoes a lot, and that's the kind of cooking I go for because it's generally simple and difficult to get wrong. But each to his/her own, eh?