Lots of people enjoy Taco Tuesdays and after last night's meal, I think we might start having Spaghetti Sundays! I decided to try making Crock Pot Spaghetti Sauce. Normally, I open a jar of Ragu or whatever sauce sounds yummy, add frozen meatballs, boil my pasta, and I'm done. This took a bit longer, but the results were pretty great. I started by browning some ground beef and sautéing it with salt, pepper, and onions. Once that was done, I added it to my crockpot with crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, brown sugar, minced garlic, oregano, basil, thyme, a bay leaf, and red pepper flakes. I gave it a good stir and turned the crockpot on high for about 3.5-4 hours. It was supposed to cook on low, but I started it a bit late. After 2 hours, I had Mike give the sauce a stir and a taste, so we added more garlic, oregano, basil, thyme, and red pepper flakes. At 3 hours, I heated up the oven to cook some bread, made a salad, and started my noodles boiling. Once the bread had cooked, and the noodles were done, it was dinner time. This was really excellent spaghetti sauce. It definitely had a kick to it thanks to my heavy hand with the garlic and red pepper flakes. My bread and spaghetti noodles were both from Whole Foods 365 and they were pretty delicious. The bread was sealed and needed to be cooked, so it was nice and fresh. This sauce was worth the time spent, as it was definitely better than jarred sauce. I made enough pasta for about 4 servings, but we definitely had extra sauce. I put the extra sauce in a plastic container and froze it, so we can have a quick and easy meal on another Sunday. This recipe could definitely be adapted to taste with many different seasonings.

The New Austonian