How To Make Spaghetti Sauce

For Jen.

This recipe seems to be rather time intensive. You may be able to further refine it, and make it a bit more simple.

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I have to confess, I don't really have a recipe, but here goes.

Order Roma tomato seeds from Vesseys in December. Also order beefsteak tomatoes. (You might as well order about another $200 in plants and seeds while you are at it) Start tomato seeds indoors in February. Water, thin, fertilize. Bring them outdoors in mid-May. Plant them in early June. Water, fertilize. Develop welts when you weed around them, because you are, in fact, allergic to tomatoes. Decide in August that the best of the summer is over, and prune ruthlessly. Laugh at Franken-tomatoes.

Give beefsteak tomatoes away to co-workers as your free-with-zucchini-gift because Mr. Spit is out of town. Take ripe Roma tomatoes from the garden. Throw them whole in the freezer until they are all ripe. Finally, in late September, when you have pushed it absolutely as far as you can, tear home from work, carefully picking all remaining tomatoes into boxes. Wipe carefully. (Bonus points if you are doing this wearing a suit, in a snowstorm.) Tomatoes take over kitchen. As they ripen, throw them into the freezer with their vine ripened buddies. Sometime in November, when Mr. Spit is shrieking about having no room in the freezer for dog food, plan to make spaghetti sauce.

Haul everything out. Grab single big stock pot. Debate about grabbing second stock pot, decide not to.

Fill pot with water, set to boil. When water is boiling, throw tomatoes in for about a minute. Peel off skins. Finish task, swear and itch madly, remember that you are allergic to raw tomatoes, go upstairs, find box of Benedryl that expired 5 years ago, put box back into cupboard for discovery next year, and run out to store, to buy Benadryl.

While at grocery store, also buy mushrooms, celery, gasp at price of bell peppers, buy orange and yellow anyway, carefully forgetting to buy Italian sausage or ground beef: your choice. Buy iced tea, take Benedryl in the middle of store, and stare in amazement at the welts on your arms.
Go home. Throw sodden mass of semi-thawed tomatoes into stock pot. Go and get second pot at this point, just because it is really obvious that you did, in fact, need it. Put enough water in to cover the tomatoes in both pots. Walk away for several hours.

Find wooden spoons by allowing the tomatoes to boil over at this point, and have your burner short out. Drive to the appliance repair shop, purchase a new burner and drive all the way back home to install it. The stove will still not work, and you will be asking for the nice repair person to attend your house. Pull stove out from wall, locating all wooden spoons that have fallen behind stove. Also, enough fur to make a good sized schnauzer. Get stove fixed.

Resume making sauce. After the tomatoes have boiled down into a thick mass, run them through the tomato mill. Marvel that you used to push them through a wire sieve, and that your arm would feel like it is going to fall off. Your arm still feels like it is going to fall off, but at least, you will console yourself, this is technology, and must be better. Return remains - sans seeds and other bits- to the stock pot. You may wish to feed the English mastiff that is trying her level best to trip you, the pulp from the tomatoes.

Wash out second pot, return to basement for next year. Better yet, leave it at the top of the stairs so that you can trip over it while bringing down a load of laundry.

Into remaining pot of tomatoes, throw in several tablespoons of minced garlic from Costco, diced celery, ground zucchini (what, I have to use it up somehow!), a cup of olive oil, diced onion, salt, cup of brown sugar, oregano, cinnamon, rosemary, thyme, sage, Worcestershire sauce. Boil for another hour or two. Make sure the pot splatters a lot, so that you are still wiping up spaghetti sauce on Christmas eve.

When the spaghetti sauce is starting to look quite thick, get ground beef or Italian sauce that you have forgotten to purchase out of the fridge. Swear. Drive back to grocery store.

Brown sausage, chop peppers, mushrooms. Throw the lot into the pot. Smile at your husband as he indicates that he is looking forward to spaghetti. Cook longer.

Parcel out into Ziploc bags, make labels. Freeze flat on cooky sheet.

Go to serve remaining sauce over spaghetti for dinner, realize that you don't have any spaghetti, decide that neither you, nor Safeway will be safe from a breakdown in the middle of the pasta aisle, open up several boxes of Kraft Dinner, placing cheese powder packages in cupboard next to those from the last several years. Boil macaroni. Serve sauce.