Spaghetti Sauce

Beginning in the mid sixties we made spaghetti sauce using a recipe which was used by a number of our close friends but probably my mother in law was the one who made me a believer. I always grew great tomatoes and lots of them.Come fall the natural thing to do was to keep them in some usable form for the winter.

At first I made and canned a dozen quarts or so but as time went on we bottled up to 50 quarts. That seems like a lot but by the time you share with friends and family the number is more like 35 quarts. This year we had a bumper crop but still decided to downsize for our goal was 25 quarts.

Much to our surprise when we went to the process of actually making this sauce, we see that the real number will be around 36 quarts. So much for downsizing. We love to eat pasta at least once a week and this amount will be used in a hurry. Theresa and I take more than a dozen bottles to Florida to treat our American friends to Ontario tomatoes at their best, in spaghetti sauce.

There is no doubt of the nutrition value in tomatoes and we try to eat them in some form or another but in Florida you cannot buy a good eating tomato. We grow our own there as well and as a green gardener we have the same result as we do in Ontario, great tasting tomatoes.The secret is to use good seed, fertilize with organic material, cow manure and water often. Do not add these quick growth chemicals and you will be rewarded.

Today we will complete our bottling and have a supper with our new fresh sauce and pasta. We will judge it and make the same remark we do each year and declare it the best ever. I expect my family to appear any minute after all the sauce is in the bottles. They know a good thing as well and we will have a visit as a bonus.