Savory Sundays: Marinara Sauce

This is something that I tried for the first time, and I will continue to make over and over again. I've always been intrigued by the idea of making Marinara Sauce from scratch, and lately I've been working on making my own meat sauce recipe to serve with spaghetti. I think I've come close to coming up a good recipe for the meat, so I figured why not go all the way and make the sauce for it as well. Here's the link for the Marinara Sauce recipe, which I got from All Recipes. And really, it's a simple recipe to make.

Ingredients

2 (14.5 ounce) cans stewed tomatoes
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
3/8 cup (6 tablespoons) olive oil
1/3 cup finely diced onion
1/2 cup white wine
1 tablespoon brown sugar (optional)

All together now:

Toss in the tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, parsley, oregano, salt and pepper in a food processor.

Blend that until it looks like this:

Then, take the olive oil and heat it over medium heat. Toss in the onions and saute for a couple of minutes:

Then, add the tomato mixture as well as the white wine. Now, I suppose you could leave out the wine. I almost did but figured I'd try it with the wine and if I didn't like it or if it didn't go well, I'd just leave it out the next time. Well, I liked it. So it stays. And I'm not a wine drinker. Also, the brown sugar is optional; it seems to cut down on some of the tartness from the tomatoes, at least that's how I understood it.

Simmer for 30 minutes. You have to stir occasionally because otherwise the bubbles from the heat will get tomato everywhere. When it's done, you have a good amount of marinara sauce. This one came out great and it worked very well with the meat I seasoned and cooked.

What I also like about the marinara sauce is you can add a lot to it; mushrooms, extra garlic, a bay leaf while it's on the heat... whatever strikes your fancy.