Spice up your spaghetti dinner with delicious homemade sauce

Let me tell a story about spaghetti sauce and learning to cook. My mom, a straight-from-the-box or can-kind-of cook, only made cookies from scratch (900 at Christmas) and concocted something my dad called Heartburn Soup from dribs and leftover drabs which I thought was actually very good. Her spaghetti sauce consisted of a can of tomato sauce opened and a packet of Italian seasonings added. That was it.

When I left home, I lived for a year with a single mom named Jane and her young family. Besides providing child care, I fixed supper. One night, Jane said, “Let’s have spaghetti.” I spent a frantic hour that day tearing through the cupboards looking for the little packet of seasonings, and finally, in desperation, I went to the store and bought one because I didn’t know how I could make the spaghetti sauce without it.

Jane was very good-natured when I told her my tale that evening, and merely opened the Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book to pages 384-385, where, to my astonished eyes, I saw that tomato sauce for spaghetti had onion, green peppers, garlic, salt and pepper added to 31/2 cups of cooked tomatoes or a No. 2 can of tomatoes. What a revelation! Another cookbook she had suggested grated carrots, basil, oregano. Who knew?

I recalled this experience when Sharon in Surry wrote looking for “spaghetti sauce made from scratch and simmered all day.” Adrienne Durkee, my neighbor on Islesboro, sent along her recipe. She starts with a quart of her own home canned tomatoes, and in the recipe that follows, I specify how many pounds of fresh tomatoes will give you the quart you need. Some people like to peel their fresh tomatoes and take out the seeds, the theory being that the seeds make the sauce a bit bitter. I hope Adrienne won’t mind that I embroidered somewhat on her basic recipe, drawing on my youthful discoveries. Adrienne advises, “Don’t add water and do taste to see if more seasoning is needed.”

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Mainers are good at thriving in hard times. Our cooks know how to stretch a dollar, and if we don’t miss our guess, what with the price of heating oil alone, some of us are going to have to find new ways to be economical this winter. Send along your favorite recipes (or tactics) for tasty, healthful, and inexpensive dishes so we can share them here.

Send queries or answers to Sandy Oliver, 1061 Main Road, Islesboro 04848. E-mail: tastebuds@

prexar.com. For recipes, tell us where they came from. List ingredients, specify number of servings and do not abbreviate measurements. Include name, address and daytime phone number.

Spaghetti Sauce

Serves 6 very hungry people.

1 medium onion

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 quart home-canned tomatoes

1 29-ounce can of tomato puree (3 cups of homemade puree)

2-4 cloves of garlic (to taste)

1 green pepper, minced (optional)

2 teaspoons dried basil

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 bay leaf

2 7-ounce cans of sliced mushrooms

2 tablespoons of sugar or 1 medium carrot grated

salt and pepper to taste

Sweet Italian sausage and/or meatballs

Cut up the onion and, using a heavy, stainless, one-gallon steel pot, cook it for about five minutes in the olive oil. Add the tomatoes, puree, crush the garlic into the tomatoes, add the green pepper, herbs, mushrooms, sugar or carrot, and simmer it over a low heat for at least three hours. Alternatively, you can put the sauce in a slow-cooker on high for 6 to 8 hours.

About an hour or two before serving, brown the sausage and meatballs and add them to the sauce. As Adrienne says, “These will give flavor to sauce.”

Big hint: make twice as much as you need and freeze some for a quick supper another day.

Note: About 11/2 pounds of fresh tomatoes or 1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes can be substituted for the home-canned tomatoes.