canned pasta sauce

Here's the recipe for the pasta sauce as I promised yesterday.
It's from the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving.  If you want a copy of the book for yourself, I got mine for around $5 or $6 from walmart.  Now on to the recipe.....

Seasoned Tomato Sauce
Yield: about 14 pints or 7 quarts

45 pounds tomatoes                       1 tablespoon black pepper
6 cups chopped onions                   1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
12 cloves garlic, minced                1/2 cup salt (optional)
1/2 cup olive oil                             2 teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)
6 bay leaves                                  Bottled lemon juice

Wash tomatoes; drain.  Remove core and blossom ends.  Cut into quarters; set aside.  Saute onions and garlic in olive oil in a large saucepot.  Add tomatoes, oregano, bay leaves, black pepper and sugar.  Stir in salt and crushed red pepper, if desired.  Simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Remove bay leaves.  Puree tomatoes using a food processor or food mill.  Strain puree to remove peels and seeds.  Cook pulp in a large, uncovered saucepot over medium-high heat until sauce thickens, stirring to prevent sticking.  Reduce volume by one-half.  Add 1 tablespoon bottled lemon juice to each pint jar, 2 tablespoons bottled lemon juice to each quart jar.  Ladle hot sauce into hot jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace.  Adjust two-piece caps.  Process pints 35 minutes, quarts 40 minutes, in a boiling-water canner.


now this is what i did different:
First off I only did a 1/2 batch and that pretty much filled up my biggest pot (except for my canner, but I needed that to can the sauce).  2nd I removed the skins from the tomatoes at the start.  You can easily do this by putting them in boiling water for about 20-30 seconds and then putting them in cold water, the skins should peel right off.  Lastly, I don't own a food processor or a food mill so I just used my immersion blender (used this for the salsa as well).