Thick and Spicy Meat Sauce with Red Wine

Thank goodness I found the very last of my homemade spaghetti sauce in the bottom of the freezer!  With all of today's baking and cooking, not to mention the continuing cleaning and wrapping (it IS Christmas Eve EVE  after all), I am NOT fussing over dinner! 

When the hubbub of the holiday is over, here's my recipe for my sausage-y, meaty, garlicky, thick and rich spaghetti sauce made with a good, hearty red wine.  Make a big pot to freeze for your own busy days to come!
  

Thick and Spicy Meat Sauce with Red Wine

• 1 pound hot Italian sausage - if you don't like hot sausage, use all sweet sausage or half ground beef
• 1 pound sweet Italian sausage - I really like mine with fennel seed
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 pound onions, chopped
• 2 large green peppers, chopped
• 1 pound mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
• 6 large cloves garlic, minced
• 2 18-ounce cans tomato paste
• 2 24-ounce cans tomato sauce
• 1 28-ounce can tomatoes, do not drain
• 1/4 cup instant coffee powder
• 1 tablespoon thyme
• 3 tablespoons basil
• 2 tablespoons oregano
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 36 ounces red wine (2 tomato paste cans full - get all that paste residue out of the can with the wine)
• 2 bay leaves

In your biggest soup pot, saute sausage (removed from casing (if it isn't bulk sausage), breaking up with potato masher) until browned.  Remove from pan, pour off grease.  Saute veggies in olive oil, add the rest of the ingredients. 
 
Cook slowly for several hours, stirring frequently so the bottom doesn't burn.
 
Freeze what you don't use in quart containers or zip top freezer bags.  Don't forget to write the date and what's inside on the container.  Before I learned to to that, I can't tell you how many times I pulled spaghetti sauce out of the freezer only to find out after it thawed that it was chili!