This marinara sauce recipe comes from my Sicilian great-grandmother, Nana Mary, who lived to 105 and had exactly one rule: no sugar in the sauce, ever. Her secret instead was a little baking soda to cut the tomatoes' sourness. In this video I make her sauce, tell her story, and show you how to can a version safely so it can sit on your shelf all year.
I'm using store-bought canned tomatoes in this recipe on purpose, so it's easy to follow along with tomatoes you can actually find, whether or not you've got a garden or your own canned stock on hand — plus fresh garden tomatoes, tomato paste, olive oil, onion, garlic, and a mix of fresh herbs.

I also walk through why tomatoes need special care when canning, why I make two separate batches — Nana's exact recipe for the pot we eat that night, and a properly acidified batch with no baking soda for what actually goes in the canner — and why I cook my sauce down and pressure can it rather than water bath canning.

Before the recipe, I cover why this matters more than ever right now: tomato prices are up over 22% year over year, and a real 2025-2026 recall of a marinara sauce over an unvalidated canning process shows exactly why the process matters as much as the ingredients.
Exact measurements, ratios, and full step-by-step instructions for both batches are in the Substack article linked below.

Stick around to the end — we're giving away another free piece of hand-made orgonite, and my husband Tivon explains how to get yours.

Learn to prepare and preserve a traditional Sicilian marinara sauce using a family recipe passed down through generations.

This guide is for anyone looking to stock their pantry with real, shelf-stable ingredients. I am sharing my great-grandmother's single rule for the perfect marinara and walking through the entire process, from chopping fresh ingredients to the final canning steps. It is simple, effective, and keeps your kitchen stocked without relying on store-bought jars.

Canning tomatoes properly is a skill that saves money and ensures you know exactly what is in your food. By following this family recipe, you can maintain a supply of homemade pasta sauce that beats anything from a grocery shelf. I also have a small giveaway of handmade orgonite at the end for those interested.

Subscribe for weekly homesteading breakdowns, and let me know in the comments: what is the one pantry staple you prefer to make yourself?

Eyes open, hands dirty.

0:00  Intro — Nana Mary's One Rule
0:15  Free Orgonite Giveaway (Stick Around)
0:45  What We're Making Today
1:15  Why This Matters Right Now
2:15  Nana Mary's Story
3:00  What Goes In My Sauce
3:45  Making the Canning Batch Safe
5:00  Matching a Tested Recipe
5:45  Cooking It Down & Pressure Canning
6:15  Perspective: Honoring Nana
6:45  Free Orgonite — How to Get Yours
7:00  Closing & What's Next

Free EMF Awareness Guide
Tivon and I spent years researching this for our own home — we put what we learned into a free 60-page guide. It walks you room by room through your own space: grounding and shielding options, things to consider around smart meters or a nearby cell tower. We're not doctors and this isn't medical advice — just what we researched and found useful for our own household, and we wanted to hand it to you the same way. Completely free:
https://www.ftwproject.com/free-ftw-c...

Free Harmonic Phone Shield (Just Pay Shipping)
This is our small business — my husband and I hand-make orgonite ourselves, using the best ingredients we can source, because it's something we built for our own home first. We're giving away a free Harmonic Phone Shield, you just cover shipping, plus a few other exclusive deals we only offer here:
https://www.ftwproject.com/free-harmo...


Substack Article (video-specific)
Read the full article and dig deeper on this topic on Substack — includes exact measurements and instructions for both batches, plus the sourced tomato price and recall breakdown referenced in this video:
https://hopegirlblog.substack.com/p/m...