Spaghetti Sauce With Italian Sausage

After many years of experimenting, I think this is a terrific sauce. Its a great way to use those extra tomatoes from your summer garden. The freshest ingredients make the tastiest sauce.

• Ready In: 2 hrs 20 mins
• Serves: 12
• Yields: 8 pints

Ingredients

• 10  lbs tomatoes, ripe
• 4  lbs Italian sausage
• 1  lb mushroom
• 2  green peppers
• 1  large onion
• 2  garlic cloves
• 1⁄8 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1  teaspoon salt
• 1  teaspoon sugar
• 1⁄2 teaspoon oregano
• 1⁄2 teaspoon dried basil

Directions

1. Peel tomatoes and add to large pot. This is easily done by dropping them into a pot of boiling water for 5 minutes then plunging them into ice water for another 5 minutes. The peels will come off easily. Be careful not to lose the juice while peeling.
2. Chop 1 green pepper and 1 onion (peeled) and add to tomatoes.
3. Add 1/2 of the mushrooms, whole.
4. Add salt, sugar and other spices.
5. Bring to boil and simmer for 1/2 hour, stirring often to prevent scorching.
6. Cut 1/4 of the sausage into pieces.
7. In separate pan, add 1/2 of the olive oil and brown the sausage.
8. Add sausage, including the fat, to the simmering vegetables.
9. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours, stir often.
10. Cut remaining sausage and olive oil into 3 inch sections and brown in pan. Add to sauce. You can add as much or as little of the fat back into the sauce. The amount of fat you have depends on the sausage you use.
11. Simmer another 10 minutes and serve over your favorite pasta.
12. Sauce can easily scorch on the bottom of the pot, so it is important to simmer on low/medium heat and stir often.
13. Hamburger, meat balls, chicken or turkey sausage can be substituted for the Italian sausage, or you can skip the meet and add the olive oil directly to the sauce. You can also add almost any vegetable you want.
14. Leftovers can be frozen.
15. In the off season, you can use canned whole, peeled tomatoes.