Bookdog: How to make spaghetti sauce

Spaghetti sauce! Without the preservatives! Something to do with all those tomatoes in the garden! A way to pass 3 hours of your life!

This was our first time making and canning spaghetti sauce. It took us 3 hours, but we might be able to cut that down to 2.5 hours once we get faster.

The $2.99 jar of Ragu sounds like a good deal, doesn't it?

I read that roma tomatoes are the best to use, but we didn't plant those. Oh well.

First step, bring a saucepan of water to a boil. Drop a few tomatoes in there. Watch them closely. In about 30 seconds to 1 minute, the peel will start to split.

Take it out of the pot and drop it into some ice water. This is so you can touch the tomato without burning yourself.

Take it out of the water after a minute. The tomato should peel very easily.

Cut off the top, or stem. Slice the tomato in half. HALF! Not lengthwise. If the tomato was a globe, don't cut pole-to-pole. Cut the hemisphere. Make sense?

This should expose the seeds.

Squeeze the tomato in your hand to dump the seeds. Scoop out the rest. You don't have to get all of them.

Do ALL the tomatoes. Put them in a colander to drain.

Chop mushrooms, green pepper, and onion.

Saute them in olive oil.

Put the tomatoes in a food processor to make them into a liquid.

Drain some of the chunks out of the liquid.

Put it in a pot.

Drain the veggies too.

Add them to the pot. Add whatever spices you want. We also put in a can of tomato paste - the only ingredient that didn't come from the garden or farm share. Let this simmer for a long time. Probably about 2 hours.