Oh tomatoes, how you PISS ME OFF. I know that Roma tomatoes are considered the best tomatoes for making tomato sauce and such, but if the fucking things won’t grow any bigger than two inches long and after peeling and seeding them, I get maybe a pea-sized amount of tomato meat off each tomato, WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT?
I spent two and a half hours on Saturday peeling and seeding tomatoes, and before I began I was all kinds of thrilled because I was looking forward to making this tomato sauce. We never got enough tomatoes to make as much tomato sauce as I wanted last year, so this year Fred planted a million tomato plants and they’ve slowly started coming in and I’ve been popping them in plastic bags and putting them in the freezer, because once tomatoes are frozen and thawed, the skin slips right off and you don’t have to blanch them.
So after two and a half hours of peeling and seeding and chopping out the stems, I ran everything I had through the food mill, because that recipe calls for 10 quarts of tomato puree to start. Know how much tomato puree I ended up with?
Five and a half cups. Not even a quart and a half.
“How is this possible?” Fred asked when I presented him with the evidence. “Ragu is a buck a bottle. It should cost like a thousand dollars!”
No shit.
So I put the puree in a freezer bag and froze it, and maybe after another couple of months and 130 hours of effort, perhaps I’ll end up with enough tomato puree.
UGH.
DAMN YOU, TOMATOES.
What I accomplished this weekend, in pictures.
Dehydrated eggplant slices to rehydrate and use as lasagna noodles this winter.
Dehydrated cherry tomatoes to use in stir-fries and chili this winter.
Canned tomato juice. I don’t know what on earth I’ll use this stuff for (certainly not for drinking), but it seemed a shame to let it go to waste.
Fred made his first batch of strawberry habanero jam of the year. He says it’s particularly good. I myself didn’t try it – I prefer not to sizzle my taste buds right out of my mouth.
Also, I vacuumed the house and did laundry and hung out with the kittens, but I have no pictures of those exciting activities. I also took a Saturday afternoon nap with Kaylee flopped across my stomach. I love that damn kitten.
Summer squash season, at least for the And3rsons, is over. We’ve got enough put away until next year, so we were just eating it as it came in, but the squash bugs completely infested the plants (and the squash), and when Fred brought squash in yesterday, all of it had holes in it (and some even had squash bugs still rooting around inside the squash, yum!), so he spent the afternoon yanking up the squash plants.
We never did get much zucchini, though I got several cups of shredded frozen before the squash bugs had their way with the squash. Squashes? You know what I mean.
Speaking of zucchini, a few weeks ago Webster asked if I wanted her chocolate zucchini bundt cake recipe from Sunset Magazine, and of course I said yes, so she shared it with me, and this past weekend I made it.
It’s really good! Fred tried it, and he said “There’s an interesting flavor… it’s familiar, I can’t think of what it is…” and I said “It’s got orange peel in it” and he said “That’s it!” I like the very slight orange flavor and the slight cinnamon flavor, and the glaze could not have been easier to make and drizzle (I put the glaze in a plastic sandwich bag and cut a hole in one corner and drizzled away, ’cause I’m fancy like that).
So, thanks Webster! In the middle of the winter I’ll pull some shredded zucchini out of the freezer and make the cake again, and it’ll taste like summer to us.
This here is the recipe, if you’re interested.
Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: Y’all are good for my yellow ego!
2005: Maine recap.
2004: Hawaii recap.
2003: Maine recap.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: The cats are suddenly deciding to take closed doors as a personal affront.