I love the flavor of fresh herbs and homegrown goodies!

With an overflowing garden this year, I decided to try and preserve some of the wonderful garden flavors. I did this by making homemade tomato sauce with my tomatoes and green peppers, as well as some of my fresh garden herbs! I didn't follow a recipe for this...just tasted as I went :)

I started with 7 tomatoes from my garden...red, yellow and orange!

I made a cross on the bottom of each tomato and dropped them into a pot of boiling water to remove the peels. Boil about 1 minute.

Remove from the boiling water and put into an ice bath. Once cooled, remove the skin, stem and seeds. No need to chop, just squeeze out the seeds.

Peel two carrots and dice. Peel and cut one large onion, a few cloves of garlic (I  love garlic so I used about 7!), and one bell pepper. Cut everything into about 1 inch chunks.

Throw into a large pot with 2 TBS of olive oil and cook over medium low for about 1 hour. I also added a handful of grape tomatoes that were needing to be used up. I didn't peel them, just threw them in whole.

After one hour, use an immersion blender or regular blender to puree to desired consistency. I made mine very smooth.

Simmer for another hour and season with black pepper, red pepper flakes, oregano and basil. I used fresh oregano, basil and thyme in mine. Check for seasoning before removing from the heat.

This made 4 jars of sauce, which are now happy residents of my freezer for a taste of summer this winter :)