SPAGHETTI SAUCE

It's been over two years since I have been able to do any canning, but i finally got to can some spaghetti sauce yesterday.  A good friend of mine gave me a bushel of tomatoes from her garden with a few bell peppers thrown in on top. So I was overwhelmed with the urge to do some canning, and i had everything i needed already to get the job done.  It was a hard decision as to what i wanted to do with the tomatoes, but we eat a lot of spaghetti, so it really was a no brainer!

I forgot how much work actually went into canning, especially with a four month old daughter begging for my attention.  But i was able to keep her entertained (I think).  I put her swing in the kitchen with me and told her all about how to can tomatoes and of course broke out in song on occasion.  I am one of those cooks who doesn't like to measure, so my sauce never turns out the same way twice, but i will detail the things that are constant.

First thing i had to do was wash the tomatoes and discard the bad tomatoes that i couldn't use.  Then i prepared one pan with boiling water and another with ice water.  I would blanch the tomatoes for 10ish seconds and then dip them in the ice water.  Now i say 10ish because it depended on the size of the tomato.  You want to blanch them just long enough to peel the skins but not turn the tomato mushy.  So next step peel the skins off of the tomatoes.  If you leave them on they become really chewy and are not good tasting once they cook down. 

Next step, take the seeds out!  This also eliminates alot of the juice.  You can strain the seeds and make tomatoe juice, but i did not do that this time.  Towards the end of my bushel of tomatoes, i got a little lazy and just began squeezing them with my hands. And yes some seeds still got into my sauce. 

Then comes the long part... cooking the tomatoes down.  While the tomatoes are cooking I clean up my kitchen and prepare the next step.  I cut up 4 onions, 2 green peppers and 2 yellow bell peppers and pureed them in my power blender.  I add this to the tomatoes along with some salt, garlic powder, and sugar.  I let this cook for about an hour and the scraped the foamy stuff off of the top of the sauce.  I then added about 2TBSP baking soda.  Now be careful when adding this because it will bubble up and over flow if your not careful ( i love chemical reactions). Again i scraped off any foam on top of the sauce.  I then allowed the sauce to cook for about an hour stirring periodically. 

Now for seasoning, i added italian seasoning, basil, oregano, black pepper and a little more garlic.  This is all done to taste, so remember the seasoning will get stronger as it cooks down. I then add 5 cans of tomato paste.  Several hours later it is ready to can.  I like a thick sauce, so i let it cook for quite a while. I test it by putting a spoonful on a plate and draw a line through the middle. If the line doesn"t go back together it is done!

After this it's standard canning instructions!  So now i have 7 quarts of spaghetti sauce that look wonderful and taste just as good!!