homemade tomato pasta sauce

So, our tomato harvest has been pretty crazy.  I planted a ton, and they grew like mad!  Now that they're harvest-ready we've been overrun with tomatoes and trying to make things with them before they all go bad.  I already shared the tomato pesto appetizers that we made, and we just made this ketchup last night (oh my god, so delicious), but we've also made homemade pasta sauce!  Dan bought some old cookbooks from the thrift store a couple months ago, one of them is a cookbook sharing recipes from various regions of France, and the other is an Italian one. I found this pasta sauce recipe in the Italian book and figured if it was a recipe from Italy it had to be pretty good.  I love making things from scratch and it's fun to realize that things you previously only bought pre-made at the store can easily be made at home for a fraction of the cost.

Ingredients:
2 Medium Onions
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp olive oil
1 carrot, grated
1 clove garlic, chopped
3-4 sprigs parsley, chopped
2 lbs fresh tomatoes, chopped
1/3 tsp thyme
Several leaves of fresh basil
1/2 tsp salt
pepper + celery salt to taste
1/2 cup meat stock (or veggie if you prefer)

1. In a relatively large pan or pot, cook your sliced onions in the butter and olive oil until they are soft and golden.

2. Add your grated carrot, garlic, and chopped parsley and simmer for 3 minutes.

3. Add the fresh tomatoes, thyme, basil, salt, freshly ground pepper and celery salt to taste and meat stock.  Cover the pan and simmer the sauce for 1 hour to 1 1/4 hours.  When it is fairly thick, force it through a fine sieve.  This recipe makes enough sauce for 1 lb spaghetti.

I grated some parmesan cheese on top of mine, and I also would love to make some meatballs to pair with this sauce!  There are lots of other sauce recipes in the same cookbook, including some meat sauces, so that would be fun to try as well!