Slowness and Tomato Sauce
This morning, I wrote over at my other blog – Andilit – about the way that Jenna Woginrich of Cold Antler Farm has inspired and guided me in this dream of a farm life. Here’s an excerpt from that post:
No matter how you make your living and build your life, here is what Jenna first taught me and what I see every day on this farm – goodness does not come with rushing, with fretting, with pushing so hard to just “get er done.” No, goodness – wholeness, beauty, breath – those things come in the slow moments when we choose to do a job well and completely, when we stop and see while we do. It is in those places – where the squash blossoms burn our retinas with their sun-blazed beauty – that life is really lived.
If you’d like to read more, I hope you’ll hop on over and share your thoughts there on slowness and the good life.
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Also, I missed last week’s recipe from the farm, so this week, you get two. Yesterday, I made our first batch of tomato sauce this season, and if I do say so myself, it’s my best yet. 🙂 My mom used to make tomato sauce, and it was delicious but too runny, and last year, I made a lot of sauce, but I thought I could do it without peeling or seeding the tomatoes – not so much.
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So here’s what I did this time:
God’s Whisper Farm Tomato Sauce
8-10 really ripe tomatoes
1/4 c. olive oil
Small onion
1/4 c. butter
Dried Thyme
Dried Oregano
Salt
Pepper
1. Peel your tomatoes. I peel mine by boiling them for one minute and then dropping them in an ice bath. The peels slough right off.
2. Seed your tomatoes. Squeeze those babies into a compost bowl. Get out all the pulp and seeds you can so that your sauce is nice and thick.
3. Chop up those red balls of goodness. I break them down with my hands and puree them in a food processor because I don’t like chunky sauce, but you could just hand-dice them if you wanted.
4. Saute onion in olive oil (add green pepper and fresh garlic if you want) until the onion is translucent. I do this in the bottom of the stock pot in which I”ll cook the sauce.
5. Add pureed/diced tomatoes. Then add in your herbs. (Hold fresh basil until the end if you are adding it since it can become bitter during cooking.) Bring sauce to a boil.
6. Reduce heat and let simmer, covered, for 2 hours. Then, uncover and simmer for 2 more hours or until the sauce is the thickness you desire. (Note – do not go to bed, as I almost did, with the sauce simmering. 🙂 )
Then freeze or serve fresh. Makes about 1 quart. 🙂
If ever there was a cooking process that reminded us of the value of slowness, it’s the making of fresh tomato sauce.
If you try it, let me know what you think.