Homemade Tomato Sauce

My husband got a little carried away planting four different varieties of tomatoes this year, and now we have an abundance of tomatoes in our organic garden!! We've given a lot of them away to neighbors and friends, but they're still coming "out of our ears!" We don't have a stand up freezer, and I don't know how to can yet, so I'm trying to come up with recipes to use up this bumper crop before they ruin. Yesterday, I made a platter of yummy vegan fried green tomatoes and a large batch of fresh salsa. Today, I made marinara sauce that I adapted from several different recipes I found on the Internet. I served this sauce over pumpkin raviolis.

Ingredients - organic of course
olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
5-6 chopped fresh tomatoes, with the juices
1/4-1/2 cup dry red wine (I used Natura Organic Carmenere that I found at our local HEB grocery store)
pinch of dried red pepper flakes
1/8 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf Italian parsley
1/8 cup or small handful fresh chopped basil
sea salt and black pepper to taste
1/2 envelope Tree of Life stevia (optional)

Directions:
Drizzle about 2 T olive oil in a large pot and heat over medium. Add the onion and bell pepper and cook until soft, about 5 minute. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add the chopped tomatoes and their juices and bring to a boil. Add all seasonings except basil and parsley (if you're using dried, you can go ahead and add them now) and lower heat. Simmer for at least an hour mashing the tomatoes with a potato masher so the sauce will be less chunky.

Stir in the chopped parsley and basil. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed. Sauce will keep up to a week in the refrigerator. Garnish with Parmesan if you eat cheese or nutritional yeast.