Squasha Sauce

Doesn't that sound exotic and tasty?  It's not, but the name makes me giggle.

Basically, I made pasta sauce... but since I don't eat pasta, but I DO talk about what I cook, I figured that I should probably change the name to avoid the 'but you said you don't eat wheat' conversations.

I'll give you the recipe here, but I encourage you, if you want to make Squasha sauce, to use YOUR favorite vegetables and seasonings and then take all the credit for inventing Squasha Sauce to your friends and family!

I'm going to give the quantities here that I used (estimated) but basically the amount you make is going to depend on the size of your pot and freezer space or the number of hungry mouths you have to feed.

In a large pot, brown one onion, five or six chopped cloves of garlic and fresh sliced mushrooms in olive oil (I used about 14 sliced white stuffer mushrooms).  When the mushrooms have cooked down, add in chopped peppers (as many as you want... I put two pimento peppers, one orange, one yellow and a sweet red pepper in).  Continue to cook down and then add chopped zucchini (I used two medium zukes, cut lengthwise and then lengthwise again and then chopped).

Add your seasoning.  For this batch, I used one finely chopped Cherry Pepper (purchased at the farmers market... when unique peppers are not seasonal, I usually use chiracha and some cayenne).

Add about two dozen chopped ripe roma tomatoes. (I chopped them, left them on the cutting board, sprinkled coarse seasalt on them and let them rest for a couple min before adding to get the juices flowing).

In another pan, brown your ground beef (or chicken, or pork or turkey or sausage), sprinkle generously with cayenne pepper and sea salt and then add to your stock pot.

I added two jars of Classico pasta sauce, one jar of water and two teaspoons of Tabasco (it was all I had left) to the pot at this point and then simmered.

That's your basic Squasha Sauce.  Ground meat of choice (or no meat for a veggie option), coarsley chopped veg of your choice (before I went 'modified paleo' I used to add corn and peas...) salt, pepper and some heat seasonings (peppers, chili pepper, tabasco sauce etc...) as to your own liking.

Because I'm dumb, I didn't have the spagetti squash cooking while I was mucking about with the sauce, so by the time the sauce was done I was starving and didn't want to wait for the squash.  I ate a bowl of squasha sauce for dinner.  It was actually VERY yummy by itself and I would suspect that if a bit more liquid was added, you could have a nice chunky fall soup out of this same recipe.