Hi, all! It’s been a while since I wrote last, and I hope you’ve been well since then! Hard to believe it’s already October, when all the good fall harvests happen. I’ve been hard at work tending my own little garden, and have suddenly been overwhelmed by a ton of tomatoes ripening all at once! I was wondering what to do with all my tomatoes until I saw a recipe in my favorite magazine, EatingWell, for a slow cooker tomato sauce. You don’t even have to peel the tomatoes! It fit the bill perfectly and the result is so good that I wanted to share it with you! This recipe works best when you use a fleshy, rather than a seedy, tomato, such as a Roma or Brandywine (which happens to be what I’ve been growing). Here are the ingredients:

• 6 pounds tomatoes
• 2 cups chopped white or yellow onion
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1, 6oz can tomato paste
• 3 tbsp minced fresh garlic
• 2 tbsp finely chopped fresh oregano
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 4 tsp granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt, divided
• crushed red pepper to taste

Cut tomatoes in half lengthwise. Gently squeeze out the seeds and discard them.

Mix onions, oil, garlic, vinegar, sugar, tomato paste, oregano, and 1 tsp salt in the bottom of a 6 quart (or bigger) slow cooker.

Layer the cut tomatoes on top of the onion mixture.

Cover the slow cooker and cook on Low for 4 hours or High for 2 hours (I’ve used High both times I’ve made this). After the cooking time is over, uncover the slow cooker.

Puree the mixture until chunky using either an immersion blender, or a regular blender in batches.

Set the lid of the slow cooker slightly askew on the cooker and cook until the sauce has thickened, an additional 3 hours on High or 6 hours on Low.

Season with the remaining salt and crushed red pepper to taste. You can either use it now, or you can portion it into quart-size freezer bags and freeze it for up to 6 months.

Ta-dah! No more tomatoes left on my counter (well, until the next day when I went back out to check my tomato plant) and I have sauce to last me for several spaghetti nights! I highly recommend this recipe (and EatingWell magazine!) and hope you enjoy it! Happy cooking!