Spaghetti Sauce

I enjoy making my own spaghetti sauce. Unfortunately it is not as cost effective as buying it already made. Well, I suppose it could be if you hunt down amazing prices on tomato sauce and stewed tomatoes. At any rate I will share my "recipe" with you. Recipe is in quotes because it isn't really a recipe, it is whatever I feel like. I'll do my best.

I use:

TONS of mushrooms
2 green bell peppers
2 onions
about 5 cloves of garlic
3 cans of (I think) 15 oz tomato sauce
3 cans of (I think) 15 oz diced/stewed tomatoes
1 small can (I think) 4 oz tomato paste
About 4 heaping tablespoons of Italian seasoning
1/2 cup brown sugar
pepper
salt
crushed red pepper
butter or olive oil

Chopping up my mushrooms, onions, peppers and garlic.

With 1/4 cup of butter, or for the more healthy conscious (I love the taste of butter by the way) 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil, saute the garlic, bell peppers, and onion until the onion is transparent. This takes hmmmm, oh I don't know, 5 minutes?

Add the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms have "cooked down". Again about 5 minutes.

Then, you add EVERYTHING else! The Italian seasoning, sugar, salt, pepper, etc is to taste. I even add crushed red pepper to give it some zing. Maybe about a teaspoon of that.

After a taste test, Mary decided it needed more garlic. Hopefully Mary will warn people before she talks to them that she ate her spaghetti sauce that day. Lots o' garlic could equal no friends!

I let it simmer for a while. Notice the nice steam coming off there? Yummy! Next, you store it all! Measure out about 25 oz of sauce and you can put it in Ziplocks or jars,. then freeze it! If you put it in ziplocks (like I do because it is a space saver in my freezer) then let the sauce cool off before you bag it. That way you don't compromise the integrity of the bag. The sauce kind of melted the plastic the last time I did that. :D Oops!

Please, try making this some time! It's so easy and really leaves a lot of room for you to mess with it. Some revisions I would like to make in the future are to add anchovies to the sauteing process. They are supposed to "melt down" so you don't get chunks of anchovies. Plus, they are a great salty flavor. I would also like to add shredded carrots for an added vegetable. Also, in the past I have used fresh herbs; basil, thyme....mmmmmmm..... So much better that way.

Enjoy!