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.