Slow-cooked Spaghetti Sauce

After a recent trip to Costco, Jake and I accumulated a GIANT can of crushed tomatoes. We bought it to use on homemade pizza, but ended up with a ridiculous amount leftover. (Side note: I dont even like tomatoes). This giant jar was taking over our refrigerator and didnt leave much room for our new wine from Trader Joe's! Ugh. Jake's friends even came over and gave him a hard time about this huge can of non-sense.

So, I was finally fed up until I had a brilliant idea while I was in the shower (where all of my good ideas happen) at 9pm. Let's use our crock pot, which I hate and we never use, to make an even more ridiculous amount of spaghetti sauce! Yeah good idea! So I dragged Jake into the kitchen to start chopping! It made me think of my grandma, who makes her own sauce over the course of 3 days! Since it takes so long, she makes a huge, huge pot of it and freezes what she doesn't immediately use. I found a recipe online that took 9 hours. I didnt want to go the 3 day route because leaving the crock pot on while I'm at work just freaks me out. I would have visions in my head all day long of my house burning down. Not worth it!

The recipe I found is as follows:

4 cloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, finely chopped
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large (28 oz) can diced tomatoes
1 large (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes
1 small (6 oz) can tomato paste
1 cup of dry red wine
1 tablespoon of dried oregano
1/2 tablespoon of dried basil
salt to taste
1 tablespoon sugar

Lightly brown garlic and green pepper in 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy frying pan on the stove. Transfer to crockpot. Add tomatoes, puree, red wine, oregano, basil, salt and sugar.Stir well and cover. Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours and serve over pasta with Italian bread and more grated Romano.

We didnt use tomato paste because we didnt have any and I added some turkey meatballs from Trader Joe's. We ate the sauce with TJ's gnocchi last night and I froze the rest. (sorry, I didnt take pictures) It turned out really well, but I think the recipe could have used some onions instead of bell peppers. And that stupid crock pot is a you know what to clean!