Crockpot Pasta Sauce

[greenmama]

A couple of weeks ago I made a huge mess of pasta sauce.

A lot of my green efforts come from an increasing p.o.'d-ness at how many pasta sauce jars and yogurt containers and applesauce jars I find myself throwing into the recycling bin.  It's a a lot of refuse.  Makes me mad.

So I saved a few jars from purchased pasta sauce, and I made sauce in the crockpot.  A whole lot.  Again, the basic easy ridiculous recipe involves a lot of non-measuring and throwing of handfuls of stuff into the pot.  Something like this:

Vegetarian Crockpot Pasta Sauce:

• Fill the crock about 2/3 full of various raw veggies: mushrooms (not more than half a pound unless you brown them first), cut up bell peppers, chopped onion, zucchini, whatever else you can think of.
• Add maybe 3-4 (or more, if you're me) spoonfuls of crushed garlic from a jar, or the real stuff if you're up for it, in with the veggies.
• Ditto a few teaspoonsful of Italian dried (or 3 times as much of fresh) herbs and spices.
• Pour 4 big cans of diced tomatoes with juice into the pot.  Add 1 can of tomato paste.  Stir if you want to, or don't bother.
• Cook on low all day.  Give it a good stir when you get home from work.
• About half an hour before serving, start some pasta to go under it, toss in a couple of glubs of cheap red wine, 1-2 tsp. salt, and more Italian herbs.
• If you live with kids who won't eat recognizable veggies, attack it (gently!) with an immersion blender to obliterate/disguise the veggie pieces.  (And as careful as you're being, don't wear your white tank top while you do it, because if you're wearing a white tank top you're guaranteed to splatter.  Murphy's law.)

Got a total of 4-5 jars of pasta sauce this way, with very little work and not much cost either.  And it's pretty darn healthy.

Think that's what we're having for dinner tonight...
--J