Dollar Stretching Meat Sauce

The idea behind this sauce is to help stretch you dollar as well as help make meal times easier. From this you get the equivalent of 5 jars of pasta meat sauce and it is freezable. Now, I was light on the spice for this recipe. Since I am now having to learn how to cook for my daughter I have had to take a lot of the spice out. It can however, be added beautifully when you reheat it.

2 Jars of your favorite pasta sauce. We use Prego or Barilla.
1 Large can of Tomato Puree
1 Regular can of dice tomatoes
1 8oz package of chopped mushrooms
1 large green pepper diced to you liking
1/2 large onion or 1 med onion chopped finely (if a kid can see it they will not eat it)
1.24 lb package of Italian Sausage (1 pack of Johnsonville) sweet or mild
1.5lb of ground chuck (spend the extra $$ on chuck since you lose less in the cooking process)
1/2 cup of red wine (any kind of wine you like to drink)
olive oil

In a large crock pot put in pasta sauce, tomato puree, diced tomatoes and mushrooms.
On the stove top brown your ground chuck. Drain and add it to your crockpot.
In the same pan you browned the chuck drizzle some olive oil and BROWN your sausage. To brown it cut it into pieces to your liking and put in the pan. Add the onions and green peppers. You are not trying to cook these until they are done. Just until the sausage is brown. Put entire contents of the pan into the crock pot (including the sausage juices). Put the red wine in the pan and put it back on the stove top to deglaze the pan. Pour entire contents into crock pot.
Cook on low for 6 hours.

I recommend using the new screw top ziploc containers. They freeze so well. Not only that but when you are ready to use a new container it can go right into the microwave to reheat :-)