It is a personal taste thing. Personally we don't find the NCHFP recipe to be at all bland. It includes 1 cup of chopped sweet peppers. And like any other ingredients you can always add more after opening and prior to serving. But it all depends on if you are seeking a recipe for cooking and fresh eating or one for canning. You can find many different cooking/fresh eating recipes for spaghetti sauce over on the Cooking forums here and on the Recipe Exchange Forum. But they aren't safe for canning. Recipes that are safe to can will be fairly basic in order to make them safe. Then the other ingredients to boost them to personal taste preferences are added after the jar is opened. Linked several previous discussions on this question below. Some of them include recipes too and will indicate if they are a canning or a cooking recipe. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Spaghetti sauce discussions

Sometimes a recipe may seem superficially risky but testing determines it isn't. However, I'd need to know something much more specific from BH&G re their testing and also the qualifications of their staff before accepting at face value the assertion a recipe is fine to can. I've purchased the last two annual BH&G canning special issues and in both cases I've seen recipes I wouldn't trust without some data. However, I've had difficulty emailing BH&G and getting any kind of response. Maybe someone else will have better luck. I think things have changed in the food publishing world. It used to be that Sunset, for example, had excellent testing facilities and experienced staff and I trusted their recipes. However, a recent recipe for canned tomatoes called for Fruit Fresh to acidify. That is not equivalent to citric acid and told me they're no longer reliable. Similarly, our local paper, The Oregonian used to have experienced canners on staff and good links to OSU Extension, but last canning season they published a melon jam with 1 teaspoon of lemon juice. I never did get a reply as to how the author of the book they reviewed determined that amount was sufficient for a low-acid fruit. And Penzey's a few years back published a home-canned mayonnaise-type sandwich dressing. I told them it posed risks but I never heard anything. It seems the way a lot of these publications "respond" is by ignoring their readers. Carol

I would just like to add that even though you may not be a wine drinker or even like wine, using a wine let's say, "most people" wouldn't drink is going to adversely affect the flavor. I once used "cooking wine" and after watching a bevy of cooking shows and being constantly told, "use only a wine you would drink", I soon came to discover the method to that madness. I consider myself a pretty good cook and in those days (some 20 years ago)I was starting to branch out into more complex recipes. I also was not much of a wine drinker and definitely not an aficionado. I asked a number of different people for advice on which wines to use. A decent (doesn't have to be expensive) wine, will make an excellent dish. A funky, substandard wine can kill a dish. I wish I would have had this resource (GardenWeb) back then which would have saved me a lot of blah or even worse results in my cooking adventures with wine! Good luck with your sauce! I have had some fantastic results using wine, brandy and liqueurs in my jelly, jam, and preserve making adventures!

PWM, just remember the adjectives: A half hour sauce should be "fresh", "bright", "clean". A five hour sauce should be "rich", "complex", "deep". Re making your own tomato base, a lot depends on where you live, and how good the tomatoes really are, whether homegrown or bought. If you have great tomatoes, and are planning to use them for pasta sauce, it's most common to process and can or freeze them at their peak. The recipes are the same whether you use commercial or home made. My idea of pasta with fresh tomatoes, however, is along the lines of what Ruthanna posted, rather than making puree for days for just one pot of sauce. By the time it's cooked down, I don't find enough difference between homemade and the good kind of bought to make a big enough difference for a long simmered, complex sauce which cooks the "freshness" right out of it. I did that when I had no way to can or freeze, and plenty of extra hours for mindless cooking, but it's not efficient. :) Much better to use the fresh tomatoes as fresh, unless you're preserving your garden's produce or live in a place where excellent tomatoes aren't common.