Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

So this past Sunday, my husband and I made the trek to Ohio to visit family and Monday night was a family dinner. We had eight of us total including Grandpa Francis and Granny Wright around the table. I prepared the meal and although it wasn't my usual "everything is homemade" kind of meal, everything was delicious! Our menu was spaghetti with meat sauce (meatless for the hubby), garlic bread, Italian bread, and cherry crumble pie for dessert. The only thing I actually put effort into was the spaghetti sauce so I will share the recipe for that. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of everything before we stuffed our faces and looked like small children eating spaghetti for the first time.

* My meal was made for eight people. If you're not making for that many, halving this recipe will work best.

What You Need:

- 7 jars of spaghetti sauce (different flavors are A-OK)

- 4 lb. hamburger

- 2 green peppers

- 1 large onion

- Italian seasoning

- Brown sugar

- Garlic powder

- Onion salt

- Large Crock-Pot

- Large skillet

- Slotted spoon

How To Do It:

First, you'll want to chop your veggies up and put them in a skillet until soft. While the vegetables are cooking, open the jars and dump the contents into the large Crock-Pot. After the veggies are all soft, dump them into the sauce in the Crock-Pot. Now you can start browning your thawed hamburger. After the hamburger is browned, use a slotted spoon to remove the chunks so as to alleviate some of the grease you may have at the bottom of the skillet. As you are removing the hamburger from the skillet, drop the chunks by the spoonful into the sauce. When all of your hamburger and veggies are stirred well into the sauce, add a couple shakes of Italian seasoning (as the sauce already has seasoning), about 4 Tbsp. brown sugar, a couple shakes of garlic powder (be careful, it can come out of the container pretty fast), and a couple shakes of onion salt. Stir everything until mixed well and you don't see anymore dark spots from the brown sugar. Leave in the Crock-Pot on high heat 4 hours or low heat 8 hours, stirring as often as you can. This is an easy recipe to just let sit and is not high-maintenance at all.

Make sure to get your faces good and messy with this meal and let me know how it turned out!