Easiest Red Sauce

This is the simplest, easiest, fastest way I know how to make homemade, eat it that night or a week from now, pasta sauce, that’s really delicious and actually nutritious (which is a stretch for most of my cooking :] ).

Ingredients:

• 28oz can of tomato purée
• 28oz can of skinned stewed tomatoes – chopped up
• 2 large bell peppers (your choice of color) – chopped up
• 1 large onion – chopped up
• 4 cloves of garlic – chopped finely (or garlic powder if you don’t mind the dry stuff)
• olive oil
• italian seasoning or oregano, basil, rosemary, sage, and thyme (fresh is obviously yummier, but most of us just have italian seasoning hidden in our cupboards)
• salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste

Preparation:

Choose a big pot (think 56oz of tomatoes and all our veggies have to fit).

Coat the bottom with the olive oil and with low heat, put in the finely chopped garlic. (If you are using garlic powder, do not put it in now.)

Once your garlic is sizzling a bit, add in the entire chopped up onion and stir it up to get the garlic and oil coated all over the onion.

Add in your italian seasonings, to taste but I’d say about 2 table spoons for the amount of sauce being made, and salt and pepper.

Add both of the chopped up bell peppers when the onion is translucent and stir it up with everything else.

Open the can of stewed tomatoes and take them out of the tomato juice and cut them into fours.(save that extra tomato juice, in case you want to use it later to thin out the sauce.)

Add the tomato once you like the texture of the bell peppers (I don’t like to overcook them, because I like having them crunch a bit in my sauce.) and stir everything in together.

Open the can of tomato puree and pour entire can into your veggies.

If you were using garlic powder put it in now along with red pepper flakes if you like spicy as much as I do.

Final stir and let simmer for at least 10 minutes before serving so all of the flavors can meld together.