Vegetable & Flax Seed Marinara Sauce

I am always trying to find ways to add some extra nutrition into our and our children's bodies and this marinara sauce is a perfect example. I make up a batch or two at a time, sometimes toss a few new ingredients in or skip one if I did a bad job following my grocery list. Once you make this sauce, you can freeze it up to 6 months. A great sauce to use on pizzas, pasta, anything really. This time, I added some flax which has a whole host of benefits. As always, try to use organic products.

Ingredients:
1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

3/4 sweet onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped

1 carrot, chopped
1/4 teaspoon each course salt & black pepper

2 (32 ounce) cans crushed tomatoes

1/2 cup water

1 cup baby spinach leaves, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro

2 fresh basil leaves, chopped

2 dried bay leaves
1 tablespoon ground flax seed*

1. In a large pot, heat oil over medium high heat. Add onion and garlic and saute until soft and translucent, about 2 minutes.

2. Add celery and carrots and season with salt and pepper. Saute until all the vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes.
3. Add tomatoes, water, cilantro, parsley, baby spinach, and bay leaves and simmer covered on low heat for 1 hour.

4. Remove bay leaves, stir in flax seed, simmer for 5 minutes and check for seasoning.

5. Once cooled down, puree with immersion blender or place half the mixture at a time into a blender, processing until smooth. You can always simply leave it nice and chunky. I like t puree as then the kiddos do not see larger green pieces and it makes it a bit more flexible with many dishes.

* I only used 1 tablespoon as that was all I had but I am sure you could easily add more and not even taste it.

If not using all the sauce, allow it to cool completely and pour 1 to 2 cup portions into freezer plastic bags or containers. Also, this sauce is sweet so use yellow onion and cut down on cilantro if you wish to make the taste less sweet.

Yields about 6 cups; more depending on whether you add water.