Stopped buying pre-made pasta sauce about eight months ago and I’m genuinely annoyed it took me this long

This is going to sound obvious to a lot of people and that's fine. I was a jar sauce person for years. Grab whatever's on sale, dump it on pasta, done. Completely reasonable, I'm not here to shame anyone, I did it for a long time.\

Then one evening I had pasta, no sauce in the cupboard, and I did not want to go to the store. I had a can of crushed tomatoes, half an onion, some garlic, olive oil, dried oregano and basil. I found a basic recipe online and made sauce for the first time in my life. It took maybe 25 minutes including cleanup. It was noticeably better than jar sauce. Not a little better. Actually better.

I've been making it every time since. I buy crushed tomatoes in bulk when they go on sale, a can is usually around 80 cents to a dollar here, and a batch makes enough for two or three meals depending on how many people I'm feeding. The whole thing costs maybe $1.50 to $2 total and takes less time than I used to spend standing in the sauce aisle trying to remeber which one I liked last time.

The only things I've added over time: a small pinch of sugar if the tomatoes taste acidic, a parmesan rind if I have one in the freezer (game changer honestly), and sometimes red pepper flakes. That's it. I don't do anything fancy. I know some people don't have 25 minutes on a weeknight and jar sauce is genuinely the right call for them. But if you have a little time and you've never tried making it from scratch, the gap in quality vs cost is pretty hard to justify going back from.

I just wish someone had pushed me to try it sooner.