My Food Revolution: Homemade Pasta Sauce

This was my first time making my own sauce so I turned to Teresa Guidice's 'Skinny Italian' for help. While I didn't use her actual recipe for the sauce I did use her canning tomatoes information. Even though I'm telling you how I did it here, it's worth the book just for her sauce recipes. I can't wait to try them!

1. First you'll need to buy some good Roma Tomatoes, for 1 lb of meat I'd get at least 10 good sized tomatoes. Wash tomatoes and place in a large pot bring water to a boil. I put tomatoes in before it was boiling.
2. Once the skin cracks on the tomatoes you will need to dump the hot water and run the tomatoes under cold water. I ran this for about five minutes. (While doing this I put my lean, free range and grass fed ground beef in a skillet on the lowest setting.)
3. Once the tomatoes had cooled a bit I grabbed the skin and pulled it off of all the tomatoes. (I would highly recommend doing this as it gets MESSY once you start to get rid of the seeds)
4. After all the tomatoes were skinless I grabbed a knife and cut off the top where the tomato would have connected to the vine. From here you'll see a white/yellow coloring form an I down the middle. I cut parallel to the I and then slightly squeezed the tomato over my sauce pan. I prevented seeds from getting in there an
5. just let the juice squeeze out of the tomato into my sauce pan. Then I finished cutting that part of the tomato off and put it in the pan and scooping the seeds out and throwing them in the plastic bag the tomatoes came in. Turn tomato over and repeat.
6. Once all the tomatoes were in the sauce pan I bought over to the stove and turned on low heat. I added a light sprinkle of garlic salt to the meat and flipped it over.
7. Heading back to the tomatoes I dug back in and broke up the tomatoes with my fingers. After I rinsed my hands off I added two tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil, one diced shallot, a nice helping of Red Chili Flakes and a sprinkle of Garlic Salt. I let simmer.
8. Once the beef had finished cooking I drained it and added to the sauce. At this time I turned the sauce up to a medium low and stirred in the meat.
9. I put on a pot to boil water for the noodles. Afterwards I added a few small chunks of mozzarella to the sauce and stirred it in.
10. Once the noodles were finished I spooned the sauce onto a plate and grated some Parmesan on top. I used baked ciabatta bread to sop up the excess sauce after I finished eating.

To say this was the best Italian food I've had in awhile is an understatement. The sauce makes all the difference. :)