Homemade Tomato Sauce

I was given a large box of tomatoes, I gave some of them away and told my husband, Michael that I was going to make some tomato sauce with the rest. He looked at me with a look of doubt and asked, "Really?" I always have really good intentions, but sometimes my ADD tendencies get the better of me and something more exciting gets my attention.

Michael's doubt was enough of a push to prove him wrong.

After I boiled the tomatoes for one minute and gave them an ice bath, Reece was in charge of peeling and pitting the tomatoes. I was a little worried about him loosing a finger, obviously not that worried.

I read a ton of homemade tomato sauce recipes online and kind of came up with my own by combining all the things I liked from the recipes I had read. I started with about 12 tomatoes.

I picked a bunch of basil leaves off the plant in my window sill. I LOVE garlic, and wanted a lot of garlic, I think I ended up putting in about 9 cloves of garlic. The onion in my fridge was bad, so I couldn't use that, so I just poured a bunch of dried minced garlic in the sauce. Along with the box of tomatoes, I received a big bag of carrots. The night before I had pureed a ton of them and wanted to use some of the puree, I used about a cup of the carrot puree. I still had a ton of fresh carrots, so I chopped up one and threw it in as well. The day before we had picked a crook neck squash from the garden, so it was sliced and thrown in as well. Oh, about 1/4 cup of oil and 2 TBS. of sugar were also included.

Everything was thrown in the pot and simmered for 30 mins. The sauce was very chunky and didn't look like any spaghetti sauce my kids have ever eaten, so I threw it in the hand-held food processor. I didn't get a picture of it after the processor, but it isn't as chunky. It made 9 cups of sauce, I put 3 cups of sauce in individual bags and froze them for future use.

I've always heard that making your own sauces are healthier and taste better, but now I'm a believer! The sauce tastes amazing, if I do say so myself. The flavors are so rich, it tastes so fresh, and I could pronounce every ingredient I included!