sauce.

Anyone who's been following my blog, has most likely gathered that I enjoy harvest time. A time of reaping what I've sown. A time to stock my pantry. My tomato harvest was threatened this year by what I've been told is "late blight" and I was worried I wouldn't have enough of a crop to do much with. Well, much to my surprise, I've diced up 10 bags of tomatoes for the freezer, used many in fresh recipes, snacked on the cherry tomatoes, made chili starters & even made a half batch of Ragu Spaghetti Sauce. And believe it or not, I'm still getting tomatoes! I'll most likely make more chili starter, and possibly another 1/2 batch of this sauce... nom nom nom!

So how do you do it, you ask? Easy! You can get the recipe for Ragu Spaghetti Sauce from Cooks.com - one of my favorite sites for recipes. Here's some photos of the process.

Start with fresh produce. I mixed both red and yellow tomatoes. The yellow ones are actually the best ones this year. No spots or scars. Just beautiful!

I just used my apple corer and took out the core of the tomato along with the stem. I cut any bad spots off and then blended them - skins and all!

Next were the other veggies. Vanessa helped me chop them up. Peppers, onions and garlic.



After that you cook them down in some oil. I used about 1/2 the oil the recipe calls for. You can always add more if it cooks out.

And of course the chickens get the scraps!

Once the pepper mixture has simmered, you blend it smooth too and add it to the sauce that's already on the stove simmering. That's what the tanish-white is in this picture. That will be the color of the blended pepper mixture.

Add your seasonings. I didn't grow herbs this year so I used my dried ones, but fresh would be even better! Also, I always start with the least amount of sugar and then taste it about an hour before it should be done. Add and season more as you like it to taste.

MMMMM. This has been simmering for quite some time. You can see by the sides of the pot that it cooks down quite a bit.

Then I filled my quart jars with the sauce. Make sure the jars are hot. I like to use my dishwasher to do that for me. Keeps them warm and sanitized until I need to fill them.

I referred to my Ball Blue Book of Preserving for processing time.

I just love the detailed instructions in this book!

Another side note. The recipe converted is 64 cups of tomatoes, so my half batch was 32 cups. I blended mine as I got them and over about 3 days ended up with enough to make sauce. I just kept it in my fridge until I had enough - all pureed and ready to go!