Sauce it up, yo

This is the summer I live for. Look at these beautiful jars of tomato sauce! Pizza in January? Meatball subs in March? Why of course, with sauce from the freezer.

My sauce party was such a delicious success last year that I had to have another. And I had to do it in a big hurry before I moved to my new place. Luckily, my friend Jenn was on hand for some sauce makin'. That girl is a sauce makin' machine!


$20 for 24 pounds of overripe early girls. What a steal. This time I was smart and drove to the farmer's market.

Right, so first you've got to remove the skins. Well, you don't have to, but it's my sauce party, so, yeah. Look at this kitchen toy that Jenn brought--it's the handled colander insert from her spaghetti pot. This thing saved the day. So much easier to submerge a bunch of tomatoes in boiling water for a minute than to have to drain each time or stand there with a slotted spoon fishing them out. Let me tell you, I have wicked gadget envy now. I must have one!


Peel them, crush with fingers, and try to let some of the water and seeds run out...

Last year we tried to chop the hot tomatoes. Crushing by hand is much better. This is where your Sicilian grandmother would be useful, but as neither of us is Sicilian, we did it ourselves.

We made lunch and let the tomatoes cook down for two hours, maybe more. This batch had salt, pepper, crushed garlic, and garden herbs (three basils, flat leaf parsley, rosemary, and oregano)

We went with two styles--Jenn and her sweetie Tom prefer their sauce chunky, while I like it smooth so I can make pizza. Half the sauce went through the food mill.




Sauce two ways. Yup, this should last us a whole...five seconds.

Movin' On Up

Well, it's been a fun 5 years here at my first grown up apartment but it's time to pack up ourselves and move on. And by move on I mean move to a place down the block so I can still walk to Sushi Tomi, Steven's Green and that goofy used bookstore whose name I can never remember.

Strange thinking about the place I've called home for so long--It was here with an innocent pot of mint (any of you who have mint plants from me, they were all pieces of that original plant!), a snake plant (same) and a maidenhair fern that I was first bitten by the gardening bug. It was also here I really came into my own as a cook. Here I brought home my sweet Maxie boy. Here was my sanctuary, my place to think and unwind after long days at my favorite job in the world.

But this reflection tells me that there are more amazing adventures to come. As to the garden, I suspect that only the green beans might not survive the move and there is good news: at my new place there's plenty of room for gardening, even expanding from containers to the ground. There's an adorable kitchen with antique tile and bright sunny windows, the site of many future dinner parties. I can actually take a chip off my dad's block and learn to barbecue--no more rules about that! So, readers, stay tuned for more California gardening and cooking adventures coming soon!

Plum Jam!

Yesterday I experienced the essence of summer--no, it wasn't sitting on the beach with a trashy read (that's planned for next week). My childhood friend Diane and I walked to my cousin's house, picked these gorgeous ripe Santa Rosa red plums from his tree, and then made plum jam! A delicious success!

I had tried before to make jam thinking that it was done like tomato sauce where you can make it up as you go. Wrong. Apparently making jam is more like baking a cake than sauteeing vegetables for a sandwich--it's an exact science. Last year's plum jam looked like shoe polish and tasted worse. My apologies if I pawned some off on you thinking I was Martha Stewart. Then earlier this year I tried again with yellow plums but made the mistake of letting the fruit pulp sit out on the counter and it oxidized and looked like pond sludge, which is not what I go for in a condiment.

This time, I was going for something a little, well, brighter.

Luckily my mom came to the rescue. She has been making jam since I was a kid. We used a James Beard recipe for freezer jam that doesn't require cooking and it came out great.


The taste test: Diane approves!
(and her mom is English, so she should know good plum jam...)

Chemistry lessons never tasted so good.

This will keep me in sweet spirits all year round. Anyone want to come over for scones and jam?

And South Bay folks, stay tuned for the upcoming second annual tomato sauce making party!