A Recipe...Sort of

This beautiful pot of delish-ness is the final product. Notice all of the beautiful colors and chunks

This was the pot when I first mixed everything up and got her heating up

These are the little garden cuties I used in my sauce

Anyone who knows me, knows that I love to cook and I love to bake. There is ONE difference between the two for me. When I cook, I tend to throw things together and hope it tastes good. When I bake, I follow my recipe to a T. Always. This is why, when some of you ask me for a recipe, I have to make something up, literally! I essentially KNOW what I put in there, but the amounts of items are definitely up for debate. I guess you could say, my philosophy is if it tastes good, eat it. If it doesn't taste so good...Add something to it and hope it can pass as edible. Now, throwing things together is NOT always the case for me when cooking. I do follow recipes a lot of the time, but things I make often, I like to improvise or wing it sometimes. Today was sorta one of those days. I decided to do something nice and make homemade spaghetti sauce for dinner for the hubs. We had chicken out and we always have spaghetti and sauce in the pantry so it was gonna be a pretty easy dinner. Then, I decided what the heck, it's really NOT that much harder to make homemade pasta sauce, from scratch. Really, anyone can do it. Before I started, I did have to check and make sure I had some canned tomatos. Without this main staple of spaghetti sauce, I would either have to run to the store or doctor up some jarred sauce. Neither of these seemed to appease me, so I was THRILLED to discover that I had 4, yes, 4 cans of different variety tomatos! If I am going to make sauce, I wanna make a big batch and sort of make it worth my while and at least have some to freeze and if we are lucky, leftovers too. Like I said, my sauce really does not have a recipe, however, I have watched my father in law make it plenty of times and I just sort of follow his example and wing the rest! I have to say that this was my best batch of homemade sauce EVER! I really wanted to bottle some up as in pressure can it, but we will save that for another day, perhaps if my garden ever decides to give us tomatos. Well, here goes my attempt at a spaghetti sauce recipe. If you all have NEVER tried to make your own sauce, DO it! You more than likely won't be disapointed ;)

Spaghetti Sauce:

4- 15 oz cans of Tomatos or tomato sauce (I used one can tomato sauce, 1 crushed, 1 petite diced and 1 stewed as it's what I had)

2 yellow onions diced

1 head of garlic (yep, all of it)

1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped basil (from my garden)

3 carrots (shredded)

3 green peppers (small, from the garden, chopped up)

4 slices of cut up bacon

salt to taste

1 stem rosemary, chopped (again from the garden)

1/4 to 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (It depends on how much if any kick you want it to have)

1 tsp olive oil

Now comes the FUN part, cooking it and making it come together. First I take a large stockpot and put the olive oil in the bottom. Next in the pan is your bacon pieces. I sautee them (medium high to high heat) up until they are nice and crispy like. Don't bother to drain the bacon fat out of the pan as it gives the sauce excellent flavor. Once the bacon is cooked, add your onions and start sauteeing them. I also add a smidge of salt to sweat them out. When your onions are cooking, add your garlic (I was out of fresh garlic and only had 5 cloves so I left whole and put in the sauce and used about 1/4 cup of the pre chopped in a jar garlic from my neighbor). Once you start to smell the garlic, it's time to add the tomatos! Just dump em right on in the pool! I then added my fresh veggies and herbs and blended it all together. Once it was blended, I added a bit of salt and my red pepper flakes. I think I remembered to incorporate all my ingriedients, yes! Now, you can essentially set it and forget it. I turn mine down to about a 5 on my stove for a few minutes, get it nice and bubbly (use a lid people) and then I turn it down to a 2 or 3 and let it simmer away for a good hour and a half to about 3 hours. The longer you leave your sauce to simmer, the more concentrated and delish it will become. I sauteed mine for about an hour and a half tonight and it was delish. What, Oh, you want to see some pictures? Sure, that's no problem at all, I've got em right here. If you decide to make this sauce, please tell me how it turned out for you. And remember, this is the way I do it, feel free t adjust any amounts and add anything else that I may be missing. I would have added some squash and zucchini if I would have had some in the fridge. Happy eating!