A Whole Lotta Tomatoes!

I love home grown summer tomatoes... so much, that I planted 15 plants this past spring.

This is just one of the tomato plants before it started producing fruit.  It was an unusually cold summer this year.

Every March, my friend Caylynne and I mark our calendars and trek over to the Fullerton College Horticulture Department to buy our tomato plants.  We make sure we are there early to get the best selection.  The varieties I bought this year were:  jelly bean, tiny tim, Thai pink eggs, cherry, yellow pear, san marzano, san marzano redorta, sweet pea currant, window box roma, tumbling tom, patio, grape, fresh salsa.  I also bought some bell pepper plants too.

These are the san marzano tomatoes mixed in with the a few cherry tomatoes.

This year's goal:  DO NOT WASTE A SINGLE TOMATO!  Rules: either eat them, share with friends, or preserve them in an easy way.  So, we ate salsa (and chips) ALL summer.  This is one of my favorite things about summer.  I also shared my bounty with friends.  We ate a lot of pasta salads and green salads with tomatoes.  I made several batches of Summer Salad (tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, mozzerella medallions and balsamic vinegar) ...I could eat that everyday.  However, even after all that, I had literally hundreds and hundreds of tomatoes both large and small needing to be preserved or eaten.  I’m new to canning, but with the twins being so young, I still don’t have the time to tackle canning “all the way.”  Plus, we had to have time to go to the beach.

Solution?  Make and freeze spaghetti sauce.  Recipe?  I asked my friend, Ginni, whose husband had mentioned how good and easy her recipe was.  I eventually got a system down and did two pans each day.  I used all the different types of tomatoes to make the sauce.  I used oregano, onions and garlic from my garden as well.  Here's how:  cut tomatoes in half, chop up garlic, onions and oregano.  Drizzle with olive oil and add salt and pepper.  That's the prep.  Now, roast in a hot oven.  400 degrees for the first 10-15 minutes and then broil for 10 minutes till it's a little charred.  It will look like this when it comes out of the oven:

Then, pour that into a bowl and with one of my favorite tools, the Cuisinart Smart Stick, blend it.

That's it.  I then, poured this sauce into quart sized freezer bags and froze it.  I have stacks and stacks of sauce ready to be used when I need it.

I didn't can these jars.  I just used these that week or gave them to friends  (yes, I explained that they weren't actually "canned" and to use them right away).  I love that I could use the garlic and onions from the garden as well.

And, that's what I did in my spare time this summer.  Was it worth it?  Absolutely!