Totally Tomatoes: How To Can Tomato Sauce Starter

I've been known to go overboard with tomatoes.  I used to plant by the enticing mantra, "if some are good, more are better!"  In my first few seasons it wasn't uncommon for me to take up a third of my garden with staked tomato vines.  By July, I’d be scrambling like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory conveyor belt – desperate to put up the overwhelming influx before the next wave tumbled into the kitchen.  Thankfully, the more seasons I have under my belt, the better sense I get for what we’ll actually use.  I've learned to reel myself in during planting so that later I won’t feel the urge to stash tomatoes left and right simply to get them out of my sight.  No matter what, canning tomatoes is a big job.  For me, the payoff makes it worth the effort -- the rest of the year I have the delicious luxury of canned garden tomatoes (in all their glorious forms) at my fingertips.  

Last summer I posted about one of my favorite finales to summer canning: salsa.  This year, the season has been wet and late, so our tomatoes are just now coming in strong.  I’m rolling up my sleeves and gathering pots and pans to re-stock my pantry with another canned-tomato staple – what I call “sauce starter”.  This simple recipe is the foundation for my soups, pasta sauces, and stews.  Though I've given a basic tomato-canning “how-to” with the recipe below, it is best to familiarize yourself with the guidelines from expert resources such as Ball’s Book of Home Preserving.

Summertime: All Good Things Must Come to An End

None of us wear just one hat.  Some folks adorn themselves with a veritable plethora and other folks stick with a classic and comfortable few.  While homesteader, farmer, food-lover, writer, and wife are the top five of mine you read about on this blog, a great number of hours in the year I'm also a teacher. So alas...though the humidity still makes my hair frizz and the garden is still pumping out its glorious produce, "summertime" for me has ended.   I'm off to another creative, inspiring, growing, challenging, and intellectual place --- the middle-school classroom!

No need for concern, I'll be continuing with plenty of homestead and kitchen activities to fill the blogosphere with my tales of hilarity, pontification, and how-to.

I spent the first moments of this beautiful muggy morning reminiscing about how much I've ALWAYS loved the first day of school -- and how awesome my grown-up insulated lunch box is.

Syrup Sunday and Squash Flower Pancakes

Early in our marriage Weldon and I realized that breakfast had a myriad of bothersome time-constraints.  Plain eggs, homemade yogurt, or some other quick bite just didn't do justice to the variety of options that should have been at our fingertips.  So, we decided that on random Sunday mornings we would celebrate this oft-rushed meal.  We called it Syrup Sunday.  Whatever was on the menu, it would be drizzled with straight-from-Vermont pure maple syrup (locally purchased from an organic farm/orchard during our family's annual October reunion).  Waffles, french toast, and pancakes graced our plates.  It became obvious that pancakes won out as our favorite...so we had a household-sized IHOP on our hands.  Blueberry pancakes, peach pancakes, strawberry pancakes, banana pancakes, and the list goes on.  This weekend we were inspired to have a Syrup Sunday after visiting Weldon's aunt and uncle's garden on Saturday morning.  At one point, his aunt nonchalantly asked, "Do you want any squash flowers?"  With our own squash plants falling prey to vine borers, I jumped at the chance and instantly put a Syrup Sunday on the docket for the following morning.  "YES!!" Weldon exclaimed at his good fortune.  Below is my tried and true pancake batter recipe with an adaptation for squash flower pancakes. Here's hopin' you find a Syrup Sunday in your future!

How Does Your Garlic Grow?

Once upon a time there was a little girl who ate raw onions like apples, broccoli by the head, and garlic bread by the loaf.  As a tween, she thought it was cool to wear a t-shirt which read, "A Clove a Day Keeps the Devil Away."  She grew up healthy and strong (and routinely knocked out entire villages with her dragon breath).  Now she is living happily ever after in her garden where she grows onions, broccoli, and tons of garlic.  THE END...sort of.

Breaking Bread...and Beans

This past Thursday marked the 237th anniversary of our nation's founding. Americans from coast to coast celebrated with thunderous fireworks, patriotic melodies, and gluttonous cookouts.  Many inches of rain falling on south central Kentucky added a particularly sloshy feel to our week's activities. Our grills may have been dampened, but our spirits were not. Both sides of our family still gathered for belt-loosening cook-ins complete with mountains of potato salad and rivers of sweet tea.  There was much story-telling, many good laughs, and lots of family catch-up...a perfect holiday if you ask me.  Surprisingly, of all the meals, traditions, and visiting this week, it was another communal activity -- one significantly less detrimental to the waist-line -- that lingered in my mind as I sat to write this week's post.  It was the ritual of breaking green beans.

Kitchen Craze

Inevitable Aftermath

They say that time flies when you're having fun, so I guess it's a good thing that I'm a little amazed to recap the litany of items Weldon and I have concocted in the kitchen over the past couple weeks.  This morning alone I had three recipes on the docket: pizza dough, garlic scape pesto, and fermented sauerkraut.  Yesterday I shelled, cooked, and put up a gallon of fresh peas in the freezer.  We had an extensive list of tasty ideas piled up from winter and spring -- these would be inspiration enough -- but our dose of gifts from the garden has also begun increasing daily. Pleased as pigs in mud, we've kicked into high gear in the kitchen to make use of these early days of summer.  Before we know it, there'll be salsa, corn, and pickles, oh my!

One Wild Ride

Not in Kansas Anymore!

When I wrote the previous post I naively expected my next one to be dated a bit sooner than this.  The break that I spoke of was in fact a two-week road trip.  Though we cruised back into our own driveway a week-and-a-half ago, I've barely sat down since, never mind sitting in front of my laptop to make coherent sentences into a post.  There's a ton going on at the homestead -- there should be, it's June!  Before I get to posting about gardening, fermenting, canning, and such, I'd like to share a few snippets from the trip.  For my husband and I, travel is one of our luxuries and priorities in life.  One of the many reasons we live frugally is so that when opportunity lends itself, we can hit the road or board a plane. Our idea of travel incorporates a whole lot of the same simple pleasures that we embrace in our day-to-day: gathering with friends, eating scrumptious local food, appreciating the beauty of nature, learning about our surroundings, and enjoying each other's company.  Our recent journey over 4,000-miles, 10 states, and 4 Canadian provinces was no exception. Our trek took us to Montreal, northern Maine, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Acadia National Park, and through my childhood stomping grounds in Connecticut.  The route was a perfect mixture of new and familiar destinations coupled with hearty doses of visiting.  It was exactly the leisurely adventure we were hoping for.

School's Out!

The final bell has rung and the halls have emptied!  Summer is actually here…at least for those of us in school. I started full-time teaching in March and since then I've made some great strides and really enjoyed the classroom time with my seventh and eighth grade students.  Before the garden begins to explode with produce, canning season hits high gear, and the temperatures soar, I’m going to take a short break.  Don’t worry, when I return to the blogosphere I’ll be full swing in uninterrupted homestead life for the next few months -- I can’t wait!

Because I can, can, can

Nothing says summer to me quite like the weekly, bi-weekly, or even twice-weekly process of transforming fresh-picked produce into a Technicolor glass menagerie.   Each winter I make a list of new recipes to try or gaps in the canning pantry I’m desperate to fill.  By spring I’m chomping at the bit to line up my Mason jars, wash up my canner, and break out new seals.  When spring’s mad rush of outdoor duties gives way to higher temperatures and a burgeoning garden, it’s the kitchen that once again takes center stage.  Lugging the garden’s bounty inside is merely the intro.  Then I rumple my hair like every good conductor and begin orchestrating the whoosh, plop, clang, sizzle, and hiss of utensils, pots, pans and jars.  I maintain this rhythm throughout May, June, July, and August in preparation for the coming year.  While it can be a formidable task and I don’t always look forward to it on the morning of a canning day, I know nothing will taste better on a cold February afternoon than a half-day’s work from last August.