Spaghetti Sauce (with Meat and Vegetables)

See the noodles? No? That's because they're hiding. The sauce is the main attraction.

I have a handful of 'recipes' in my head that I know by heart and can make consistently. My sister is always frustrated because when she asks me for my recipe, I never have one. I just know it in my head, and I usually don't know where I got the recipe, I just adapted other recipes or used what I thought sounded good.

Tomatoes from my garden.

I'm pretty sure my grandpa had a secret Italian recipe for spaghetti sauce, but I've never used a recipe for it in my life. I just throw in veggies and sauce and seasonings, and I've never gone wrong yet. This time, I tried to follow Fannie's recipe, but it was very bland and I ended up deviating from it a lot.

My pretty peppers!

Here's what I did:

Start with 1 small onion, sliced thin.
Saute in a cast iron skillet with olive oil.
When onion begins to turn translucent, add 1-2 cloves garlic, minced.
Add about 1 lb. ground beef and saute until browned.
Add about 4 c. chopped tomatoes.
Add about 1 tbsp. Italian seasoning or basil and oregano.
Simmer until all veggies are cooked (Fannie says about an hour).

I like more veggies, so I also added:
A handful of kale, chopped small.
2 small green bell peppers, chopped.
A medium zucchini, sliced thin.
I also added about 1/3 of a jar of Ragu sauce, since I had it and the fresh tomatoes were a bit juicy, so my sauce wasn't thick enough. Fannie says to use a can of tomato paste, so I would use that if I had it. But this worked out well and tasted great.
 

Onions, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and kale from my garden.

This was the first time I added kale to my spaghetti, and I wasn't sure it would turn out well. But I have a lot of kale from the garden, and it's been going to waste before I get to it, so I've been trying to use it more. So, here it was. It tasted surprisingly good in the sauce. I doused it in parmesan and loaded it on a bowl of cooked noodles. The sauce was excellent, if not exactly close to the Fannie Farmer original.