Grand Canyon

I really cannot figure out how to to space my pictures and my words so I can tell about a picture before I move on with my words so that is why my pictures and my words are separate today! Any tips would be appreciated. Anyways.... Over the Columbus Day weekend our family got to go visit some dear friends of ours The Garcia's in Nevada. We had the best time with them! Friday we all piled in the van and drove about 3 hours to the Grand Canyon. It was the whole entire Marin family's first time ever so we got lots of pictures. One of my highlights was on our way seeing some of the beautiful trees changing colors. I love love love Fall and seeing the trees change is such a treat for me. That really made my afternoon. I just put a couple pics of the Grand Canyon as I am sure you do not really want to see ALL of them. One of the pictures is a "window" cut out of the rock, It is called Angels's landing, we actually got to walk on top of it. A little scary for me as I do not care for heights, but it was a great view. My next post will be about Zion National Park which we did the next day but enjoy for now...

Grand Canyon pictures

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce!

I know finally... I was able to get the pictures of Rose, Leah and I making our own homemade spaghetti sauce. It was a lot of fun and I love when I get to do cool things like this with my sisters! So you take about 20lbs of tomatoes and drop them in boiling water for about 5 mins. Then you quickly throw them into some ice water where you take them out one by one and peel the skin off. Next step is you mash them in the colander and get all the juice out. When its pretty mushy you stick it in your nice big pot with :

2 cups chopped fresh onions (then sauté or microwave them until they are soft)	3 Tablespoons of oregano
3 clove of garlic, minced	2 bay leaves
2 Tablespoons diced, fresh OR dried basil	1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped celery (optional, may be too strong for some folk's tastes)	2 Tablespoons chopped red sweet peppers
I then let it cook most of the day, it was still kind of chunky but if you want it smoother just stick in the blender. We froze it in freezer ziplock bags and that worked pretty good. Italian sausage added to it the day I made spaghetti was so good!	1/4 cup lemon juice (helps to acidify it, not necessary if you have a pressure canner)