Call me, Betty

The house we purchased had a garden already in it with many butternut squash, yellow squash, and tomatoes.  All things Derek and I do not care for.  The first time we picked from the garden I ended up sending it all home with my mom and dad as a thank you for all their hard work on the house.  My mom ended up sharing a few of her recipes; but, recommended that I try making spaghetti sauce from scratch.  Derek and I proceeded to pick everything that was ready from our garden for the second time and ended up with more than we knew what to do with and then some.  Since I now have a bigger kitchen which makes it easier to cook in and currently had two dozen tomatoes on my hands I figured why not try out my moms spaghetti sauce recipe.

An apron acquired years after my grandmother passed.  I love so many things about it especially the pocket detail.

Things you will need:
Tomatoes (who would have thought, right?!)
Sharp knife (I used a paring and chefs)
Cutting board
Blender
Sifter
Spatula or spoon
Stock pot
Seasonings of choice
Tomato paste (optional)

Once you have clean tomatoes, core them and cut into quarters or chunks.

I did end up cutting all of the stripes (technical term of course) off.

Throw the tomato quarters into a blender and blend smooth.  The mixture will be pinkish and frothy looking.

Before blending

After blending

Pour the smoothed blended tomatoes into the sifter over your stock pot.

At this point I used a spatula to kind of help get everything moving through the sifter and leaving the skin and seeds in the sifter.  Toss out the seeds and skin.  Continue all steps until you have gone through all of your tomatoes.

Now comes the extremely difficult part, cover the stock pot and let the sauce simmer on the stove until you have nearly half of what was originally in the pot.

 As time goes on the sauce will reduce and begin to look more saucelike than frothy.

The sauce will actually look a bit watery before looking like sauce

 If the sauce is too watery, add a can of tomato paste to thicken it.  In my case I added three cans of paste partly because it was getting to be 9pm and husband and I were hungry.  Add whatever spiced you prefer to the sauce and enjoy when done!

Meatless sauce

Meat and mushroom sauce

 When making spaghetti I always split the sauce in two so we can use the meatless for pizza or freeze for future meat sauce.

I don't care for sauce; but, after tasting this sauce I have to say it was so flavorful.  Both husband and I agree that it was so much better than the normal homemade sauce I normally make as I refuse to buy pre-made sauce.

*NOTE: This recipe is not for the impatient!  The sauce will take roughly 4 hours (YEP, 4 long hours) to be complete.... so incredibly worth it.