Hitting the Sauce

The temps have really dropped, a perfect time to hit the sauce. But hey I'm not talking about liquor, take a look at the picnic table below. 









I can't believe it's been an entire year since we last made spaghetti sauce. But alas, not only is the next batch of tomatoes ready but we are almost out of spaghetti sauce. So out came the huge cooking pots.

My personal preference is not to find skins in my sauce so I thought I was going to go through a couple extra steps of scoring one end of the tomato with an X after using a small melon scoop to remove the stem end. After a quick boil and some cooling time, it'd be super easy to remove the skins. But Natureman had other plans and it was to skip the parboiling part and just cut off blemishes, those ends and  half them, blending them before cooking. 

Had a difficult time cutting up these guys...

All the 'maters were thrilled to jump into the blender. (These two above discussed the situation. Sorry, I know I was taught at a young age not to play with my food) Any how the blended tomatoes were pretty frothy but would eventually settle down.

Next added was the chopped garlic and quartered onion. We didn't sauté them this year first as everything would be cooking all day. We had some extra summer squash and carrot so in they went too into the Cuisinart chop, chop, followed in the pot by organic tomato paste, a great thickening agent. (Next year my homemade dehydrated tomato powder will take this store product's place.)

Stirred in some chopped fresh basil, oregano, parsley, anise, rosemary and thyme.  Before adding salt and pepper to taste and some sugar to cut the acidity, we allowed it all to simmer and reduce before canning. It's an all day affair.

Well this batch of garden tomatoes mostly Roma produced 23 quarts of spaghetti sauce and got a thumbs up from Natureman.

Pretty, isn't it? Talking color of the sauce here.

With this cooler weather I bet we'll be opening the first of the jars for a heartier meal pretty soon right here in the End of the Rainbow Valley. Stop by and share it with us some time. We have plenty.