Sunday, August 22, 2010

In the Red!

This week kicks off the Loving Local Blogathon to support our local Massachusetts Farmers Markets.  Check out some details at In Our Grandmother's Kitchen and see all the participating bloggers at the  Loving Local blog.  The blogathon is hoping to raise money to support massachusetts farmers markets so if you would like to show your support and make a donation, click here.

 And in our garden this past week, the tomatoes were in full gear.  What seemed like a manageable amount of toms turned into an obscene amount in two days time.  So, yesterday, and finishing up today, Marc and I went to work.

We have put up a lot of tomatoes already, but this time we decided to make more sauce.

The wash

Followed by the chop and press

Into the pot to boil off...but at this point we were only half way through our tomatoes and the 5 gal pot was almost full.

We still had these babies to go!  

So another pot was started.  We boiled this down for hours until it was all in one pot and nice and thick.
We decided to start the actual canning the next morning.  Which turned out to be a good plan.

Final tally was 16 quarts and 1 pint of tomato sauce!

Here's the Down and Dirty Tomato Sauce Recipe (no salt, no sugar):
10 lbs tomatoes (or however many you may have)
1 bell pepper
1 large onion
4 cloves garlic
1 bunch fresh basil or 1 tbsp dried
1/2 bunch fresh oregano or 1/2 tbsp dried
* This amount usually fills our 5 quart spaghetti pot, so do the math if you have more or less tomatoes.

1) Clean tomatoes and remove skin, core and seeds.  We use an amazing hand press which does almost everything except wash them and we do have to cut the big tomatoes.  You can always skip the step of removing seeds and skin and keep the extra fiber too!
2) Put puree into large spaghetti pot and bring to boil.  Add all other ingredients and continue to cook down over controlled boil until desired consistency is reached.
3) If canning, process in boiling water bath for 45 minutes for quarts and pints.

Sauce with homegrown summer squash and Hager's Grass Fed ground beef.

2 comments:

  1. Makes my mouth water just reading it!

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  2. Oh, Kate--lovely! Okay, I'd probably put in a little salt. But yum yum. Thanks!

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