Tomato Sauce from Scratch

I had the blessing of receiving a whole big batch of home-grown tomatoes from Paul's mom's garden.  They are unlike any tomato you can buy in the store; sweet, tender, juicy, yum.  Unfortunately, there were more tomatoes than I knew what to do with, so I decided to try a batch of tomato sauce (something his mom had also done while I was staying at their house this summer).  I pretty much winged it, eyeballed everything, and threw it in my (CUTE) mini slow cooker (I'm usually cooking for two -- it probably holds about 3 or 4 quarts). Here's my "recipe":

Homemade Tomato Sauce

• 4 medium vine-ripened tomatoes
• 2 tsp tomato paste
• 3 cloves garlic, pressed
• a few shakes of dehydrated minced onion
• generous helping of whatever herb you have on hand (all I had was dried parsley for now)
• salt and pepper, to taste

1. Place the tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds. Remove, peel, and chop to your heart's desire. Place tomatoes in slow cooker.
2. Add tomato paste, garlic, onion, herbs, salt, and pepper. Stir.
3. If, like me, you want a less chunky sauce, stick your immersion blender in there and puree.  I blended until there were just a few tomato chunks left.
4. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours.

Mine's still simmering, so I'll have to update this post and let you know how it turns out.  Seems pretty foolproof to me, though.  I plan on boiling some frozen (yeah, I know) gnocchi tonight or tomorrow and using the sauce for that.

Cheers,
L

UPDATE: Great success! The sauce was sweet but not too sweet, and had a nice kick from the garlic.  The only negative was that it came out a bit watery -- next time, strain the tomatoes after chopping & before adding to the pot.

 Gnocchi (from frozen) with Homemade Tomato Sauce, Freshly Grated Parmesan & Romano Cheese