Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

Every year we plant a small garden.  Every year we have an abundance of tomatoes and I never know what to do with them all.  This year I thought I was being smart when I limited us to 3 tomato plants: 1 "big"(for David's slices and tomato dishes and casseroles), one cherry (for tossed salad and caprese salad) and one roma (for pico de gallo and margherita pizza)  But these three plants are yielding tons of tomatoes!  TONS!

So far we have used them in one double batch of chili, one casserole, a few tossed salads and one batch of pico de gallo but still, I am throwing rotting tomatoes into our mulch pile too often. I started researching possible tomato sauce recipes online and decided to try my hand at some homemade spaghetti sauce.  I kept putting it off but today was the day to try it. (1) Amy was home sick so I wasn't going to spend my day running errands; I would be at home. And then (2) The Pioneer Woman posted a spaghetti sauce recipe in her Facebook feed today - I took it as a sign from God.

I mentioned I was testing a spaghetti sauce recipe today in my Facebook feed and while I'm sure my mention of this has absolutely NO WHERE near the ripple effect of The Pioneer Woman mentioning the same thing, I did have one friend comment that she would like the recipe if we decided it tasted good at dinner.  I said I would share it in a "note" but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to write a note on Facebook now.  Either it's gone or I simply too slow to figure it out.

But I do know how to post a link to another page in my Facebook so I'll be sharing my recipe here and then linking to it.

Now, while I do hope to be JUST LIKE The Pioneer Woman when I grow up and I do "stalk" her via Facebook, her blog, and her Food Network show, and I have her novel and both of her cookbooks and I have actually met her IN PERSON at a book signing .... I am certainly light years away from being anything like her - I have 4 kids, she has 4 kids, I watch "Real Housewives" and so does she - - but that's about all I've got right now.  So I can share my recipe with you but I don't have cool pictures to go with it and I don't have a handy dandy printable version for you. And I didn't plan ahead so I used what I had on hand in the kitchen and in the garden.

Here it is:

Kirsten's Spaghetti Sauce:
3 batches of tomatoes rough chopped by hand and then pulsed to almost liquid in the Cuisinart.  I just used what I had and it ended up being two Beefsteak, about 10 Roma and maybe 20 cherry tomatoes. I didn't count or weigh but I can say that two batches filled the Cuisinart up to the "liquid" full line and the last batch was a little over half way there.
I poured this into my crockpot, set it on low for 4 hours and then added:
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
2? maybe 3? tsp Oregano (there wasn't much left so I poured all that I had in)
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp Italian seasoning
5 tsp minced garlic (I had the jarred stuff in my fridge so I didn't chop up fresh cloves)
about 1/2 cup merlot wine (The Pioneer Woman used white wine but I had opened a bottle of merlot last night so that's what I had on hand)
1 can tomato paste (the small can - I can't remember the amt)
3 Bay Leaves
abt 6-8 small fresh basil leaves, chopped

After it had been on low for about 1.5 hours I cranked it to high.  After 30 minutes on high I added some frozen meatballs. After another 30 minutes I set it  back to low.

All in all it was pretty tasty. It could maybe use some more seasonings and it was a tad watery - next time I will try taking the lid off the crockpot for the last half hour or so.

Disclaimer - The only things I actually measured for real was the 5 tsp of minced garlic and the two tbsp of sugar.  Everything else was "eyeballed".