Homemade Canned Marinara Sause

This year, I planted 3 tomato plants in my little raised bed garden. I planted them in the middle of my carrots and peas. I almost always kill plants, so I didn't figure they'd amount to anything. Well, they got so big that they completely mowed over one row of peas, and shadowed over my carrots. Not that it mattered, my cat seemed to think it was a good idea to dig up my carrots when they were still sprouts.

I got SO many tomatoes from my plants. I was absolutely amazed. Something I hadn't killed!

This was taken after I'd given some away!

It took a really long time for them to ripen, so as they did, I cut the cores out of them and chopped them up, and put them in the freezer. I kept track of how many pounds were in there, because the recipe I was going to use called for a certain amount of pounds. 

FINALLY I had enough ripe tomatoes to make the sauce. 

I took them out of the freezer and put them in the microwave for a few minutes, just to start to get them de-frosted. 

Here's the recipe I followed.

As usual, I made a few changes to the recipe. 




I didn't have the fancy tomato mill that they did, so after they were on the stove the first time, I threw them in a blender and called it good. I don't care about seeds or skins, and I think the blender did a pretty good job at chopping the skins. 




I also didn't use quite as much parsley or basil as they called for, but that was purely out of preference. 
I thought that the canning part was the most stressful. I had never done canning in a pot before so I was kind of nervous as to how it might turn out. I think they're fine though. I boiled them for a good long time, though I did tip one or two over trying to get it out of the pot. I think it'll be fine though. 
I haven't even had any of the sauce yet. We're going to make spaghetti with it this week. I'm pretty excited to try it out! 






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