Winter Prep

I'm not a canner but I do have a freezer to fill and it's that time of year.  Last week I froze my first bag of tomatoes from the garden.  Today I did another bag plus...


I purchase produce from a local farm stand called Harbin Farms (ironic because Sarah spent 3+ years in Harbin, China).  I buy the produce I don't grow like corn, peaches, eggplants and cantaloupe.  Today there were two boxes of tomatoes for sale and one of them was mostly paste tomatoes.  I didn't consider it long because none of my paste tomato plants survived past germination stage and I didn't find any I considered buying as plants either.  I can make sauce with regular tomatoes but paste ones are the best.  I bought the box and have spent the afternoon freezing tomatoes and making sauce which is now cooling before freezing.

Inside view.

Here's my harvest of basil for the sauce though I won't use it all this time.

What was under the basil.

Here are three bags, one of which is tomatoes from my garden.

After freezing the regular tomatoes there is this layer of paste tomatoes.

With that many I must pull out my biggest pot.

Olive oil and 4 onions chopped.

I cut off the tops and quarter them.

Add them in stages to the sautéed onions.

The pot is full.

Under the paste were more regular tomatoes so another bag for the freezer.

The sauce cooking down with basil leaves added, some sugar, some salt, and because I sweetened it a bit too much I added a whole head of garlic coarsely chopped and dried oregano.

After a good cook down I used my stick blender to puree it all.  It's nice and thick. A taste test proves it's just right.  I think we'll have spaghetti and meatballs with sauce tomorrow for dinner.

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Here's an update.  For those who read about the deer eating the geraniums from the pots on the deck I think I owe the deer an apology.  They were not the culprits because I caught this ground hog out front eating petunias and geraniums from the pots.  Now the deer did eat plants but not everything I attributed to them.  He heard me open the door and was just leaving when I got him in this photo.