It's a homemade!!!

Ok, so your supposed to say the Title with an Italian accent "It's a homemade". Today I delved into the world of homemade spaghetti sauce. You know what. It was easy, fresh, and I could have continued to eat it until it was completely gone, if it weren't for Michael putting it away.

Our garden has been doing so great this year. Today alone I picked 5 tomatoes, 2 Green peppers, 3 squash... and that's not even the tip of what we've still got out there. With our garden doing so great, comes the over abundance of tomatoes. I think I've picked 30+ so far, not including the 5 I picked this morning. So last night Michael was joking about "Why don't you make your own spaghetti sauce with the tomatoes from the garden".... oooohh Challenge on hubby. With no clue as how to make spaghetti sauce, without opening a jar or can I went to Swagbucks searching (ask me about this, it's awesome, if you want free stuff). Sure enough I found a couple recipes but they were all for recipes of how to can the tomato sauce. Now I haven't gotten into the canning my stuff yet (maybe next year), but I figured, hey if I can make that, then just cook it a bit longer and bam I'll have sauce....

So how'd I do??? I added my leftover meatballs from the night we had the mexican meatball subs. Since I only need 1/2 lb of meat for both, I usually do 1/2 mexican and 1/2 italian meatballs and save the leftover meatballs for another meal.

Spaghetti Sauce (makes enough for 4 servings of sauce)

WW pts per serving: 1 pt.

8 medium tomatoes (boil for 1 minute in hot water, then put in ice bath to remove skins)

1- 15oz. Tomato Sauce

1 tsp Oregano

1 bay leaf

1 tbsp pepper

1 Onion diced

1/4 red bell pepper diced

2 cloves of garlic

1 tsp basil

1 tsp crushed rosemary

After you remove the skins of the tomatoes, cut and take out as much seeds as possible (it doesn't have to be perfectly clean) and then try and squeeze out extra water. The less water in the tomatoes, the thicker your sauce will be (apparently). After you squeeze some of the water out of the tomatoes let them sit in a strainer in the sink. Meanwhile, saute the onion and bell pepper and garlic until Softened. Then add tomatoes (they don't have to be cut up, they will breakdown on their own). Add the remaining ingredients and let simmer, until thickened (I think I let it simmer for 2 hours, but it could have come off earlier).

Baked Ziti (makes 4 servings)

WW pts: 6 pts (including 1 pt. for sauce)

224 grams of Ziti noodles (or just go by the box for portions if you don't have a food scale)

Sauce of your choosing.

Boil noodles according to directions (if I'm going to bake it, I usually strain it a minute or two early so that the noodles don't get mushy in the oven). Then throw into sauce mix, and dump into baking dish of your choice. Bake at 375 for 25-30 minutes.

We served it with a side Caesar salad. I bought the Ken's lite Caesar dressing, and it's fantastic and a LOT less calories than the original.