J.'s Favorite Pasta Sauce

Start with cooking the bacon, 4-5 strips, in a large skillet. When the bacon is cooked the way you would like to see in a BLT, remove it from the pan and set it aside to drain on a paper towel to be used later in a BLT. (No, it does not go crumbled up into the sauce.) Next, add finely chopped sweet onions, and 1-2 small, finely chopped cloves of garlic, to the bacon fat and saute until translucent. Add the ground beef to this onion/garlic mixture and continue to cook until the beef is browned. (If you love Italian sausage it would be OK to remove the skin and crumble up 2 or 3 links to brown with the beef at this point, but not something I usually do.) Then drain and dispose of all the bacon and beef juices.

Now you will need to move the meat mixture to a large pot and integrate the tomatoes into the meat mixture, then gradually add the jarred pasta sauces one at a time to the correct consistency. Keep it loose at this point, because you will be simmering the sauce for several hours and it will thicken slightly.

Throw in a Mrs. Dash Italian Melody spice blend. This is a very fluid, flexible process. You can’t mess it up. Add anything you like. If you love mushroom, add a couple cups of chopped mushrooms. This is the basic framework...if you do it a few times, you will eventually create your own recipe and it will be wonderful.

Finally, your sauce is ready to begin the simmering process. Quarter one large green pepper and stick the 4 pieces into the sauce along with the whole bay leaves. Put a loose cover on the pot and simmer 3-4 hours or longer over a low burner, stirring and tasting regularly.

Before freezing or serving, remove and discard the green pepper pieces and bay leaves.

Anything goes as long as you do the three important steps.......bacon fat, green pepper, and simmer, simmer, simmer.