Home grown Spaghetti Sauce

Planting tomatoes in the old dishwasher resulted in a nice crop this year. From some of the bounty, I made fresh spaghetti sauce. I had one green pepper from my pepper plant and it made it into the sauce as well.

I started with about 5 pounds of tomatoes. I blanched them in boiling water and peeled off the skin. Once cool enough to handle I squeezed out a lot of the seeds and liquid and place the left over pulp into a large slow cooker. I browned a pound and a half of mild Italian ground sausage and added to the cooker. I then used some of the remaining drippings in the skillet that held the sausage and sauted a large diced onion, green pepper, red pepper and carrot diced into small pieces. I added this to the slow cooker along with a Tablespoon of Italian Seasoning, 1/4 cup sugar, salt and pepper to taste and a few shakes of red pepper flakes, plus one small can of tomato paste. I let simmer on low all day (6 to 8 hours). We ate half for dinner and I froze the other half for a future date.