Just a note that tomato sauce freezes beautifully (and I think it even tastes better after it's thawed as the flavors are fully melded). I make a double batch of tomato sauce using a recipe that combines a pound of lean ground beef or turkey (both work equally well; with ground beef the flavor is a little richer), an onion, a green pepper, 3 carrots, a can of mushroom stems/pieces, a can of pumpkin (sounds weird, but adds vegetables and you never know it's in there), one cup of cheap red wine and a tablespoon of italian herb seasoning. I let it cook for at least an hour. Then I use half of it to make a big lasagne, which also freezes well cut into individual pieces. I figure that we get 5 meals from the lasagne and 4-6 meals from the remaining sauce, depending on how we use it. Instead of pasta, we often have the sauce over spaghetti squash--low calorie and very filling; not as cheap as pasta, but healthier.

"Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook" has some fine recipes for mass quantities of tomator sauces, including a marinara sauce, one with red wine and meat, a vegetarian one, etc., as well as a really nice thick pizza sauce that is very inexpensive. I have made many of these, especially the sauce, since I work, and these can cook all day and be ready for dinner when I get home.

Additionally, the authors also have nice recipes for pizza dough that can be made in a bread machine (or conventionally, by hand), to accompany your homemade sauce. This works out nicely, because my high-schooler gets home earlier some days, and can assemble the ingredients for the pizza dough and get that working, and the timing works out fine.

You could, I guess, get all your appliances going at once and have a grilled chicken pizza. We don't have enough outlets in our tiny kitchen, though :)

Here's a 3 day menu we use once each month:

Day 1 - grill chicken breasts that have been coated in olive oil, chopped garlic, chopped rosemary and salt (out of How to Cook Everything by Bittman). serve with steamed/nuked potatoes and a steamed veggie.

Day 2 - hash! slice leftover potatoes, chop onions, add diced leftover chicken and make hash. serve with a different steamed veggie

Day 3 - pot pie! put leftover hash, leftover veggies in a deep dish pie pan on top of a refrigerator pie crust. make a roux and add chicken broth to make a sauce. pour over above, put on a top crust, cut a few vents and bake at 425 for approx. 30 min.

Works a treat!

Your tomato sauce sounds fantastic, I love the idea of adding pumpkin (which I love) and was hoping you could post the rest of the recipe? (like how many tomatoes/cans of tomato paste, etc.) Thanks!

THe commercial moonsand is one of the worst things invented...give me playdough! Moonsand gets into everything and if you follow the directions, is actually a danger to children. I learned to make a modeling mixture of baking soda, cornstarch and water and it is great stuff.