Monday's Menu

Look what arrived in the mail last week:

I'm very excited to start doing some canning. I've never done it before unless you count attending a 'class' at our church led by a lady who showed us how to can blackberry jelly. Other than that, I've always been kind of a scaredy cat about it.

One of the reasons I planted my roma tomato bushes though was so that I could try making some homemade (and canning it) spaghetti sauce. We go through spaghetti sauce unbelievably fast. It's not that we eat that much spaghetti. We also use it as pizza sauce, for lasagna, as a marinara dipping sauce, and for things like chicken parmigiana and such. It's hard to keep up with our demand even with sales and coupons.

But a couple weeks ago, I happened upon the produce reduction shelf at Bi-Lo (which is something I do a lot) (like a whole lot), and picked up a sizable bag of romas for $1.49. There were more than 20 of them in the bag. And I decided to make some of the spaghetti sauce recipe I wanted to try.

It turned out wonderfully. About the only thing I would change is adding green peppers. I finally was able to identify that flavor that I don't care for in other sauces I've tried. I guess green peppers in sauce isn't my thing. I like them plenty of other ways though.

This recipe comes from The Tightwad Gazette. She says she originally tried making her own tomato paste too for using in it but apparently the time investment wasn't worth the 40 cents it usually costs for a big can on sale.

She also said to run the onions and peppers through a grinder -- as in for sausage making. I don't have one of those so I gave my food processor a go and ended up with an applesauce consistency which was perfect. So here it is. It's handy to save for humongo bags of clearance tomatos or if you happen to be growing some. I don't think she uses a specific kind of tomato. And by the way, even the kids thought it was great. Oh, and this is mostly the original recipe but I didn't have quite that many tomatoes so I divided it into a third. That worked out just fine.

To skin tomatoes more easily, bring a pot of water to rolling boil. Place tomatoes in a colander that will fit in the pot. Dip the tomatoes into the water for about 30 seconds to a minute, until the skins split. Immediately dip the colander into ice water. The skins will come off like a breeze now.

Spaghetti sauce

12 onions

6 green peppers

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper

36 tomatoes, skinned

4 cloves garlic, minced

3 Tablespoons salt

4 Tablespoons sugar

2 Tablespoons each: oregano, basil, and thyme

5 12-oz cans tomato paste

Grind onions and peppers and simmer in vegetable oil. Add black pepper. In a large pot, place tomatoes, garlic, salt, sugar, herbs, and onion-pepper mixture. Bring to a good rolling boil. Add tomato paste last, one can at a time. Pour into canning jars and process in pressure canner for 25 minutes OR pour into freezer containers to be frozen. Makes 7 quarts.