Sunday, September 20, 2009

I Say Tomato! Make it Tomato Sauce!

Are those tomato plants giving you way too many tomatoes to eat? Don't want to waste them? Well let's be environmentally friendly then, let's turn them into pasta sauce!

I spent the day making pasta sauce and pickling my few cucumbers, so I have no idea if an election has been somehow called, or if Liberals are now proud of our flag, even though Ignegative thinks it looks like a beer label. Tonight I want to save those of you with tomatoes ripening and no time to eat them all.

Here is a fast (no peeling off skins) recipe for pasta sauce that you freeze.

Cut tomatoes (Roma work best) in half, get rid of the seeds with a melon ball. Lay them on a cookie sheet liberally basted with olive oil. Then throw on onions, green pepper, garlic and anything else you want, I add seasoning salt, Watkins Italian seasoning and a bit of sugar, cut everything in big chunks, no need to chop stuff finely, we are going to blend it up.


Throw in oven for 50 minutes at 350 or until slightly burnt on edges...adds to the roasted flavour. Cool and then blend. Pour into sandwich bags and freeze.

During the winter, take the pasta sauce out, add a can of tomato sauce and you can feed 4 people.

Next I did pickles. Sterilize jars, you can do that in your dishwasher, but I still do it the old fashioned way and use a canner. Once jars are sterilized, throw in garlic, dill, half a teaspoon of pickling spices, and a hot pepper. Fill jars with cucumbers, and then pour boiling brine into jar, filling them to the top. Seal tightly and let cool. Move them to a cold room, they will last for a year.

Brine:

12 cups water
4 cups vinegar
3/4 cup pickling salt

Boil for 3 minutes.



Unfortunately, the cold summer meant that I only got 8 jars of pickles instead of the 40 to 50 I usually get. Dang that global warming. I wonder if Lissy May has any recipes like these?

Next week pickled beets and if it's bad weather... perogies or cinnamon buns. Iggy should like the perogy recipe, didn't he grow up on them? I bet he would like my sauerkraut ones.

14 comments:

West Coast Teddi said...

During summer trip to Vernon, my grandson discovered that cherry tomatoes (unripened)work really well in a sling shot (Grampa's car was thus saved from small stones and the marks from the tomatoes matched the bugs on the grill).

The tomato crop has been very abundant this year.

bocanut said...

I love saurkraut perogies.

hunter said...

So do I bocanut, they are my favorites.

WCT that's too funny, cherry tomatoes in a sling shot! HA, hope my boys don't read this post and get any ideas.

Anonymous said...

Is my dill ready yet, Hunter?

Potato and cheddar are the best pyroghys BTW! Saurkraut are best fried up golden brown and served with eggs and fried ham for breakfast!

maryT said...

Speaking of global warming, did you see where fall has been cancelled in Colorado and Wyoming and they went right to winter. All that snow, in September, what a shock.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of cherry tomatoes, I have one plant that looks like the frost killed it (it' brown and it's crumbling), but it's still producing tomatoes! It's been a strange spring/summer/fall this year to say the least.

hunter said...

Eskimo, you missed the dill, but I have some frozen. You want potato and cheddar, you have to bring the family to learn how to make them! No freeloaders in my house.

hunter said...

MaryT, no I didn't see that. Yikes it's only fall tomorrow, I'm not ready for winter.

Anonymous said...

I've helped my good Mrs. and my mother-in-law make them several times!

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, another favourite: pereshke! Covered in dill and cream of course!

Being a fellow Ukrainian, you should know what pereshke is, Hunter!

I miss my Baba's borsht. She made hers the colour of a pumpkin rather than the traditional bright red. It must have been the farm fresh cream.

Good Lord, I'm gaining weight just typing about these goodies!

Anonymous said...

I love straight potato perogies - I really do not like saurkraut at all. In Winnipeg, we didn't call them perogies - they were (phonetic spelling, here) peraheh or something like that. My favourite is poor man's holopchi - you know, the ones with rice and onions with the bacon on top. My mother always made hers with tomato sauce but I prefer either the bacon or a mushroom sauce. The bobbas at one of the churches in the north end used to sell peraheh and holopchi for the church - the best in the world.

Anonymous said...

Ontario had a blight this summer and the tomato crop pretty much failed. I won't be putting any pureed tomatoes in my freezer this year, unfortunately. They're too expensive.

Anonymous said...

For Ukrainian new years, we used to all get together and make a ton of pereheh while getting fairly juiced. It's a wonder we didn't burn down anybody's house - cooking and drinking just should not go together but we were young and not overly intelligent back then.

There was a place in the north end called Tenderloin Meats which sold the best koubassa in the world - just pure meat and none of that cereal or fat that you find in the cheap stuff. I don't miss the mosquitoes but otherwise, I still miss Winnipeg and I haven't lived there since 1984. Hence, I am living East of Eden - that's where I got my handle.

Anonymous said...

Stawnichy still makes a decent garlic sausage, but I'm almost tired of it. My favourite came from Calihoo Meats. Pure ham, no fat, smokey flavour!