Spaghetti sauce from fresh tomatoes: Take two

Last year on a whim I bought a Roma food mill and made my own spaghetti sauce from fresh roma tomatoes.  While the sauce was decent, it wasn't anywhere near as wonderful as I'd hoped.  The food mill performed much better than I ever expected though, and it's become one of my favorite appliances.  How neat is is to plop whole tomatoes (or cut in half if they're big) into the hopper, turn a crank, and the tomato pulp and juice are quickly separated from the skin and seeds.  I was skeptical that it would work as advertised, but it really is that easy.  Definitely the best $45 I ever spent on a kitchen item.

This year, armed with an actual recipe instead of trying to fake my way through, I bought 10 lbs of tomatoes and tried again.

My results were WAY better.  My sauce is still not as thick as I would like, but the flavor is excellent.  I probably should have added an extra can of tomato paste, but I was afraid to because I liked the flavor and didn't want to ruin it.

Here's my recipe:

10 lbs of ripe roma (paste) tomatoes
1-2 16 oz can of tomato paste (or more if desired)
1 medium-large yellow onion
1 medium red pepper
3/4 head of garlic
1/2 c olive oil
2 tbsp dried oregano
2 tbsp dried basil
1/4 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

You can add other veggies if you choose, but no cheese if you plan to water bath can.

Process tomatoes in a food mill to remove seeds, skin, and stems.  Cook puree and juice on a low boil for 3 hrs. 
After 3 hrs, add tomato paste until desired consistency is reached.  Stir in brown and white sugar, olive oil, spices, and salt and pepper.  Add finely chopped peppers, onions, and garlic.  Cook an additional 30 - 60 minutes, stirring and tasting often.  Adjust spices and veggies to desired taste.

Once sauce is finished, pour into canning cars, seal, and process.  Water bath 15 minutes for pints, 25 minutes for quarts.  Yields approximately 5 quarts of sauce.

More pesto, please!

Today I made basil pesto for the first time.  This is yet another thing where I didn't realize how easy it was.  Where on earth did we get this idea that cooking from scratch is difficult??  It took about 10 minutes to make a cup of pesto, which I later added to a cream sauce and served over bowtie pasta and steamed carrots, broccoli, and zucchini.

Here's the recipe for the pesto:

1 cup of basil leaves/stems tightly packed
3 cloves of garlic
5 tablespoons of grated parmesan or romano cheese
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Process ingredients in a food processor until finely chopped.  Slowly add 1/4 to 1/3 cup of olive oil, creating a paste.  Use immediately or refrigerate.

For the cream sauce:

3 tablespoons of butter
1/4 cup of flour
3 cups of milk

Melt butter in saucepan, then add flour and cook for 3 minutes stirring constantly.  Add milk and bring to a boil, then simmer for 5 more minutes.

Add 1 cup of pesto, 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, and salt to taste.  Remove from heat and serve over pasta and veggies of choice.

I think my next feat will be to make a tomato cream sauce.  I love the roasted red pepper and sausage pasta at Friday's; maybe I can make something similar at home.

Mulberry jam

A few years ago I noticed that there were several trees on our property that were dropping berries all over the place. After a little research, I found they were mulberry trees and that the berries are edible. I guess I kinda always knew they were edible, because I remember eating them as a kid. I just never knew what they were called. Last year I picked a bunch, but only ate a few. They're good to eat, but just can't compare to fresh raspberries or blackberries. Their flavor is more subtle. Plus, they're a royal pain to pick.

This year, I'd been noticing out the office window that the mulberries were getting ripe. One of the few benefits of not having curtains, I suppose. I didn't think much of it, though, until after the bad storms a few days ago. I went out into the yard to find that a TON of mulberries had fallen from the tree. Picking them up off the ground is much easier than picking them from the tree (or would have been if my big, pregnant belly wasn't in my way), and I picked up about 4 quarts in an hour.

I had been itching to make jam and had just recently read about a woman making mulberry jam. Using her recipe (4 cups of berry puree/juice, 5 cups of sugar, 1 box of pectin) but halving the sugar and using Ball no-sugar-needed pectin, I made two batches of mulberry jam.

This all started last night, and I was nervous about how it would turn out. Not only had I never made jam before, but I'd never done a thing with mulberries except eat a few off the tree. After I had run the berries through my food mill to remove the stems and seeds, I tasted the puree. It was less than appetizing. For some reason, the resulting puree tastes worse than the fruit it came from. This has held true for me for both the mulberries and strawberries. I don't know why. But I plowed ahead anyways and hoped for the best.

After simmering and adding pectin and sugar, I tasted the mixture again. MUCH better. In fact, it was awesome! It's amazing what cooking and a little sugar can do. After testing the mix on a chilled spoon to make sure it would gel, I poured it into jars and processed them in my canner. One jar was only half full, so I set that one aside to use immediately. My "midnight" snack last night was a peanut butter and mulberry jam toasted sandwich.

I'm not sure how to relate how good it feels to have taken something from my yard and made edible, good-tasting food from it. Since I haven't ever really gardened or anything, this was my first experience truly making food. I'm just amazed, not only that it turned out so well, but that it came from my yard! Gardening and preserving is just so fulfilling. I really don't know why more people don't do it...

Strawberry jam!

Today's advenure started at the farmer's market.  I bought a flat (8 quarts) of "second" strawberries for $12.  Once I got home, I ran them through the food mill to remove the stems, leaves, and the little stalk in the middle.  The food mille (mine's a Roma), has to be one of the coolest inventions ever.  It would have taken forever to remove all the stems and leaves manually.  Even though I ran the "waste" through about 5 or 6 times to make sure I extracted all the juice and pulp I could, it still only took about 30 minutes to process all the berries.  I ended up with about 3 cups of actual waste for 6.5 quarts of berries.  We saved the other quart and a half to eat.

I poured all the puree and juice into my big stock pot, then measured out what I needed for each batch of jam.  My recipe calls for 3.5 - 4 cups of "juice" per package of pectin.

I simmered the juice for 10 minutes, then added 1 package of Ball no-sugar-needed pectin mixed with 1/4 cup of sugar.  I brought it to a boil and added another 2.5 cups of sugar.  The volume of liquid pretty much doubled by this point, and I probably could have used a bigger pot...  After boiling hard for 1 minute, I removed it from heat and checked to make sure it would gel.  I had put a spoon in my ice container earlier, so I scooped up a half spoonful and let it cool.  It gelled!  So I poured it into my little half pint jars.  Each batch gave me 5.5 jars. 

Then I loaded my 11 jars into my big, huge water canning pot and processed them for 10 minutes.

Ta-daa!!

I'll be canning again tonight, as I still have over half of my puree/juice left....  I always thought canning was difficult, since most people have stopped doing it.  I'm finding that it's really pretty enjoyable.  The actual cooking part took about a half hour per batch.  I'm going to try cooking a double batch next time, which will make it go a bit faster overall.  Still, I'll have about 3 - 3.5 hours invested in pureeing, cooking, and processing by the time I'm done.  I don't think that's bad for about 27 or 28 jars of jam.  Total cost will be around $20  ($1.50 per box of pectin x 5, $12 for strawberries, and $1.25 for an on-sale bag of sugar), making the jam cost around $0.72 per jar.  How's that for a bargain?  Plus, I know exactly what's in my jam and where it came from.

Hopefully within a year or two, I'll be making jam with my own home-grown strawberries...!

Mmm, my house smells like a bakery!

I'm amazed!  Not only did my bread dough rise and become less sticky overnight, it formed up into a perfect little ball for baking.  And then, it turned into a loaf!  A loaf that actually tasted like bread!

The crust was a little harder than I prefer, but the inside was wonderfully soft and moist.  It had a very faint sourdough taste, which was perfect.  Even Shayne was impressed.  And it went very well with the bowl of shrimp bisque I bought for dinner.

So, as promised, here's the link to the recipe: Mother Earth News 5 Minute Bread

Almost nutritious, homemade granola bars

After buying a wonderful thing called a "trek bar" from the Great Harvest Bread Co. at the Farmer's Market, I've wanted to make my own chewy granola bars. They're healthier, you can put in whatever you want, and they taste much better. After searching a bit on the internet and cambining a few recipies, I made this one up:

2/3 C brown sugar
2/3 C peanut butter
1/2 C honey
1/2 C melted butter
2 t vanilla
1 egg

3 C old fashioned oats

1/3 C sunflower seeds
1/4 C milled flax seed
1/4 C Craisins
2/3 C dried cherries and blueberries

Other goodies may be added as well, so long as the total doesn't much exceed 2 cups. Options include nuts (chopped or whole), chocolate chips, carob chips, and/or dried fruits.

Preheat oven to 350 °F. Combine the first 5 ingredients and mix well. Add the remaining ingredients one at a time, stirring well. Spray a 9 x 13 pan with cooking spray, then pack the "dough" in evenly across the bottom of the pan. Cook for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool completely, then cut into bars.

Yum!