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.
