Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

This is the first year that we grew tomatoes and I could not believe how much our 1 little plant produced. (Holy Moly! Glad we decided to just try 1 plant)

Our first harvest went for salsa while our second harvest went to spaghetti sauce.

We kind of used a modified recipe but it came out delicious!

My husband actually did all the hard work while I picked the tomatoes, prepared some of the ingredients and poured the final product into glass jars. Total team work ;-)

Ingredients:

• 35 ounces tomatoes
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 cup finely chopped onion
• 1/4 cup finely chopped carrot
• 4 cloves finely chopped garlic
• 1/4 cup dry red wine
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/2 cup fresh chopped parsley
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 2 teaspoons dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• Salt to taste

Directions:

• Crush the tomatoes with a masher or the back of a spoon
• Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat
• Add the onion, carrot, & garlic
• Cook stirring until the onions and garlic have wilted
• Add remaining ingredients
• Cover and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes, stir once
• Remove cover and simmer for ~ 45 minutes, stir occasionally

Modifications/What we learned:

• We did not peel the tomatoes so after mushing them we removed the bigger pieces of skin
• Knowing that our children would not eat the sauce if they could identify any ingredient we put it in the food processor for a couple of blends before cooking it
• We let the sauce simmer uncovered for a couple of hours to get it to the consistency we wanted
• The recipe said that it makes 6 cups. I poured it into 4 spaghetti size glass jars and froze those (Actually I froze 3 and used one the following day for dinner. We all loved it. Very Yummy!)
• The recipe actually called for 2 35 ounce cans of plum tomatoes. It also said to reserve 1 cup of the juice. Since we used fresh tomatoes we used 1/2 a cup of water instead
• It took a lot more time to make than anticipated but was well worth it.