Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

I've discovered a few recipes online lately (that I've adapted of course), and my husband says they're keepers! Here is one of them:

 

Easy Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

A few weeks ago I needed to make some spaghetti sauce, last minute. So I looked to the internet and found a recipe that used ingredients I had on hand. Last week I made it again, tweaking it a bit. Now I think I'll keep making my own sauce. It's cheaper than buying a jar, and my husband likes it better!

Photo credit: http://allrecipes.com

• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 green onions, chopped (optional)
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 (4 ounce) can mushrooms
• 1/2 green pepper, finely chopped
• 1 (28 ounce) can peeled and diced tomatoes
• 1 (8 ounce) can tomato paste
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dried basil
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dried oregano
• 2 tablespoons white sugar 

1. In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Saute onion, green onion and garlic. 
2. When onions are clear, add mushrooms and green pepper. Saute till peppers are soft.
3. Stir in tomatoes, tomato sauce, basil, oregano and sugar. 
4. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 20 minutes.

 Serves 4

Notes:
According to Rachael Ray, the correct way to make spaghetti is to boil it to al dente (lit. "to the tooth," or just shy of fully cooked) in salted water and then scoop out about half a cup of the cooking water from the pasta before draining it off. Add the water to the sauce to help it adhere to the pasta. Then dump all the pasta into the sauce (or all the sauce into the pasta if the pasta pot is bigger!) and stir it all together.

Also, I baked some store-bought, frozen meatballs in the oven (I'm not quite to the "make your own meatball" stage of cooking yet!), and added them to my sauce right before I mixed in the pasta.