Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

Tomatoes are one of the most glorious items that came out of our family's garden.  One year, during the peak of our time doing farmer's markets, we probably had 200 tomato plants.  Our job that year was mulching the tomatoes.  I can still feel the sweat running down my forehead while we pushed hay from the loft into the bed of our Dad's truck.  I can still smell that distinctive tomato plant smell on my hands, clothes and legs.  I can still see the green stains that would appear on our shoes.  I hated that day - everything about that day.  But now I don't hate the memory of that day with my sister - we were working together and I love that memory.

Although when I think of tomatoes I think of this day I also think about how much I love summer tomatoes.  There is nothing that tastes quiet like a grown in the garden tomato, and thankfully for you I will not try to come up with the right phrases to ensure that you can understand what a tomato tastes like.  But what I will tell you about is what I do with those extra tomatoes.  My mother spent hours cutting, cooking down, mashing through a canning funnel (which I didn�t even know the name of until just now when I Googled it), washing jars, heating jars to the correct temperature, canning with that scary canner that rattled, and waiting for them to cool so she could move them to storage.  But I do not have time or the skill, for that matter, to process tomatoes the way that she did.  So here is what I do. 

Sometimes you may find at your local farmer's market that late in the season, or even in the middle of the season they will have a lot of extra tomatoes.  If this is the case, buy a huge box of them so that you can make sauce for the winter!

Saving the tomatoes is easy if you know how to can, but I don't.  Of course I want to know, but I need my mother to teach me because the pressure cooker is so scary.  Anyway, I wanted to come up with another way for me to utilize or save this delicious taste for the winter without canning.  I got this idea from a dear friend, but I have stream lined the process a little to make it easier for me to accomplish!

 I begin by filling up my sink with water and placing the tomatoes in the water.  Usually, if organic and delicious, the tomatoes need to be washed.  This is the easiest way by far and I have washed A LOT of tomatoes.  Remember I grew up on a farm and we did farmer's markets during the summer - which meant we washed tomatoes and dried them.   Back to the tomatoes at hand...this process also gives me a way to inspect each tomato and cut off the band sections.

 The next step is to cut the tomatoes up.  There is certainly no wrong way to do this.  I just out the centers out and then roughly cut the rest in uniform shapes.

Next put them in a large stock pot on medium and keep an eye on them - stirring occasionally.  They will begin to break down gradually!  Then you can decide how broken down you want your tomatoes.  If you are making sauce for pasta you may let them break down further then if you wanted to have tomatoes for vegetable soup! 

After you have taken them as far as you want then you can do add ins and cook further.  Here are some add ins that I have used in the past - Vodka to create a vodka sauce (this needs to keep cooking for additional time, tried basil, garlic, oregano, wine, etc.  You can add anything to the cooked down tomatoes that you might add to a sauce. 

These were so delicious and were actually a variety that when ripe were green!  So yummy - but it freaked out some people.  

In the stock pot ready to begin cooking.  

When I am finished cooking and adding all the yummy extras I let them cool a little and process them with either a hand blender, or in the food processor.  Some years I haven�t done this because of time, or I just didn�t want to make a mess.  But I did this year.  Then simply put the sauce in freezer bags in a variety of sizes and freeze.  It is that easy. 

Although this process takes an afternoon it is so worth it!  Find a farmer and buy a bushel of tomatoes, or half a bushel and have tomato sauce all year.  Not only are you supporting the local farmers, but you are giving your family something you created that is delicious and good for them.