? Tomato Sauce From Scratch

I had all good intentions of going to workout today (it would've been a Muscle Works day), but I ended up just not having time.  Jack and I had a couple friends over for dinner; they brought the main dish (chicken breast with apricot sauce) and I made the side dish (this amazing cheesy vegetable thing) and dessert (these sweet and tangy lemon bars--not at all low cal).  It took a while to prep and cook and I didn't make it to the class.

Yesterday I undertook the weighty (heh--no pun intended) task of making spaghetti and meatballs with sauce from scratch.  Roma tomatoes are perfect for this sort of thing, and since we had some ripe ones from our garden, I thought why not?  I followed this recipe but ended up messing up a lot and changing/adding things.  Basically my big mistake was using the number of tomatoes the recipe called for, because I think it meant large tomatoes, not roma.  If I did this again, I think I would use about 40 roma tomatoes (4 times the number the recipe calls for).  Which would be a ridiculous amount of work since the hardest/most time consuming part was peeling, deseeding, and slicing the tomatoes.  Also the sauce I made did not have as much flavor as I intended; this is because I removed all the solid/chunky parts about halfway though the cooking time.  Next time I would leave them in but puree the whole thing.  I added 4 jalapenos for spice, and the sauce had absolutely no kick at all.  Here's my photo tutorial:


The tomatoes I used:

After boiling them, just peel the tomatoes like you would a hardboiled egg:

Onions, carrots, garlic, and jalapenos sauteeing in butter and olive oil:

Then I added the diced tomatoes, along with sage, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and basil from our garden:

I let it simmer for half an hour and this is the lovely slop that resulted:

Took out the chunks with a slotted spoon.  Clearly not much to work with!

Added a 6-oz. can of tomato paste and about a cup of water.  Much better!

After simmering for another half hour, added meatballs (frozen from the store):

The finished product, with fresh angel hair pasta (this was Jack's portion; mine was smaller!):

It wasn't bad, but like I said, it didn't have much flavor.  I'd like to try it again some time when I have nothing else to do and definitely someone to help me!

Yesterday for my workout I walked .6 miles, ran 1.7 miles alternating between 6.5 and 6.7 mph, walked another .6 miles, and ran another .6 miles starting at 6.5 mph and gradually increasing my speed to 6.7 mph.  Here's what I ate:

hardboiled egg
nonfat greek yogurt
leftover bratwurst with hot sauce
ginger ale (6.8 oz. bottle)
medium portion of spaghetti and meatballs
salad with provel cheese
1 glass red wine
1 Andes mint