Homemade Marinara Sauce ~ Great for Freezing!

Use a food processor to chop up your veggies (carrots, onion, celery, zucchini, mushrooms, garlic, etc.), to whatever size you like.Dump all of them into a extra large pan, heated up with a little olive oil. Saute until veggies soften (since mine were so fine, this just took a couple minutes.)Add the sugar, salt, and pepper to the veggies, mix well. (You can also add red pepper flakes if you like a little spice to your sauce.)In a separate pan, cook up your meat, drain, and set aside.Dump all of your cans of stewed tomatoes and tomato paste into a large pot. You'll probably need a big stock pot. If you want your sauce tomato-chunky, leave it be. If you want it smooth, dip your immersion blender in it and blend until you reach desired smoothness/chunkiness. If you don't have an immersion blender and want a smoother sauce, you can dump your cans into the blender, then pour into the pot.Add your veggie mixture to the tomato sauce, mix well. If you're adding meat, dump that in too.Let the sauce simmer on the stove for 3 to 5 hours, without a lid.The last half hour of cooking, add your basil.Taste the sauce and see if it needs anything else...salt, pepper, sugar, seasoning