More Sunshine Please!

The clouds are disappearing from the seven day forecast for the next couple of days. This is great because our tomato garden needs a little more heat and sunlight to ripen up some of that yummy fruit. This year we had our most productive garden, producing dozens of tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, pumpkins, and assorted herbs.What I enjoy most about gardening is learning how to do it better. Each year it seems my thumb gets greener while the tomatoes grow redder. At one point, we had so many tomatoes I had to make marinara sauce. Here's the simple recipe that I used.

Ingredients
Ripe red tomatoes, 7-10
Olive oil
Garlic 3 or 4 cloves
Onion, any kind you like
Basil, fresh or dried
Oregano

In a sauce pan, lightly brown sliced garlic and sliced onion in olive oil.
Core the tomatoes, put in pan and cover.
Heat on low for about 20 minutes.
Let tomatoes cool then peel the skins off and take out seeds.(It's not the end of the world if you decide to leave the skins and seeds on them)
Put the tomatoes in a blender and puree.(Throw some of the onions and garlic in there if you like.)
Dump out whatever is left in the sauce pan and refill with the puree.
Cook again on low heat for about 30 min.
Add oregano, basil, salt and pepper and cover.
Cook again for about 2 hours on low heat.(It's very important to stir the sauce every fifteen minutes so that it doesn't burn on the bottom.)
Pour on top of your favorite pasta and serve.

To make this recipe even more delicious, add homemade meatballs to the sauce about 30 minutes after you add the spices.

To make it even better, add sausage to the sauce when you add the meatballs. You should probably precook the meat before adding it to the sauce to get rid of some of the oily fat.

Enjoy!