This week I am excited to share some delicious recipes that will help use up the vegetables from your garden. If you don’t have a garden, that’s okay! All of these produce items are on sale during the summer for great prices making these recipes an economical option for this time of year. Who doesn’t need to save money in the summer? Between summer vacations, a new truck engine, and dental bills this month we are in need of some money-saving meal ideas 🙂 This garden Marinara is the perfect solution!
This Garden Marinara is just plum awesome. I love making my own marinara sauce anyway but this time I decided to use up some of the vegetables from our garden to add a few more vegetables and goodness. The good thing is your kids will never know they are eating spaghetti with seven different vegetables. This recipe can easily be doubled or tripled for later and freeze the extras for later. It is full of summer-garden-awesomeness! Enjoy 🙂
- 1 lb. ground pork sausage
- 1/4 cup celery
- 1 onion
- 1/2 cup carrots
- 1 green or red bell pepper
- 1 medium zucchini
- 1 medium yellow squash
- 3 garlic cloves
- 4 cans diced tomatoes
- 1 can tomato sauce
- 1 can tomato paste
- 2 Tbls. fresh parsley (or 2 tsp. dried)
- 2 Tbls. fresh basil (or 2 tsp. dried)
- 2-3 tsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. balck pepper
- 2-3 tsp. salt
- Parmesan cheese, grated
- 1 lb. spaghetti noodles, cooked until al dente
- In a food processor (or by hand) chop all of the celery, onion, bell pepper, carrots, zucchini, garlic and yellow squash together until all minced into small pieces. In a large soup pot, place the pork sausage and cook on medium heat until the sausage begins to cook down. Once the sasuage is broken into pieces add all of the chopped vegetables with a little olive oil. Let saute for a few minutes until the vegetables begin to be soft. Let the vegetables and sausage cook for 5-10 minutes and then add the cans of diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. Stir to combine and then let the sauce simmer on the stove for 1-3 hours (depending how much time you have). As the sauce simmers the sauce will become thick and cook down. Once you are ready to serve, you can season the sauce with the parsley, basil, salt, pepper and sugar. You could also add some cayenne pepper if you like a little spice. Cook and drain the noodles and then serve with the pasta sauce over the noodles and garnish with parmesan cheese.
- *Can freeze extras for later
just made this for dinner tonight. . . yum!! It's still simmering, and I don't think I will be able to give it the full 1-3 hours before we eat it, but it is really yummy! Thank you! I used an 8 oz can of tomato sauce and a 6 oz can of tomato paste, and it seemed to work great, in case this is helpful to anyone else:)
I am so glad you liked it. That is sweet of you to leave a comment and let me know you made this recipe. Freeze any leftovers for later, this recipe freezes great! 🙂
You HAVE had some
$ issues this month. . .sorry! ;-(
It has been an interesting month 🙂 Next month can only get better, right?
So can you use garden tomatoes? I have a ton! How many and what would you have to do to them to replicate canned diced tomatoes? Thank you!
You could absolutely use garden tomatoes. I just made it this week with fresh tomatoes. Usually with a regular size tomato you would need about 4 tomatoes to equal one can. You can add a little water or a can of tomato sauce to be equal to the juice in the can, but it should be just about right. The rations on this sauce does not need to be exact. I usually just throw in whatever veggies and however many tomatoes I have. Just adjust the seasonings for more or less depending on how many vegetables you ad. I don't peel my tomatoes I just put them in a food processor and puree them until smooth. It works awesome! Good luck!