Tomato Sauce

…this is going to take awhile

Ingredients

• 3-4 cans of crushed tomatoes or 15-20 tomatoes
• Minced garlic
• 1 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1-2 tsp basil
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese

Instructions

• Heat oil in a large stock pot, saute garlic
• Add tomatoes, pepper, basil and sugar. Stir and bring to a boil
• Reduce heat to low, simmer uncovered 1 hour. Then covered for 2 hours, stirring frequently
• Stir in cheese, simmer an additional 5 minutes

This recipe will make a ton of sauce, so you may want to cut it in half if you don’t plan on canning it for later.

If you’ve never canned anything it’s actually not too hard. There are a ton of blogs about it, and a bunch of seemingly overwhelming information and while I am no pro by any means I seem to have figured it out. Boil the jars and lids to sanitize. Fill the jars, put the lids on. Boil the jars for roughly 10-15 minutes. You want to make sure they are completely submerged so the lids seal. While they cool they will make popping sounds but you want to make sure the lids are completely sealed once they cool, you’ll know if they are when you press down and it doesn’t pop back up.

I mean how pretty does jarred sauce look? On a side note you will want to store it in a dark cool cabinet so don’t be like me and leave it on top of your toaster oven.