Monday, August 22, 2011

UP TO MY ELBOWS!

In tomatoes, that is!  This is about one forth of the harvest of red tomatoes from Saturday last week.
There are also yellow tomatoes.  I love the yellow ones.  They are so sweet and juicy.
 The tomatoes in the bowl on the left are cherry tomatoes.  We estimate that we had about 500 of those.  Very small but did they pack a flavor!  The best we have ever had and, of course, the label got thrown away so we don't know what variety they are so we can plant the same next season.
Some really nice eggplants.  Since I can only eat so many veggies I googled eggplants and found that I could freeze these.  It is very simple.  Peel the eggplant and cut into thick slices.  Blanch in lemon water for no more than 4 minutes, cool and freeze.  I am hoping to make some eggplant casseroles this winter and some eggplant fritters.
In this pot is tomato sauce.  I took many of the cherry tomatoes and put them in the food processor.  I did not puree them but left some small chuncks since I wanted the  sauce to have some texture.  I added chopped onion and green pepper.  I spiced the sauce with bay leaf, oregano, and fresh basil.  I let it simmer for about half an hour.  I ended up with 4 containers of sauce.  I froze three of them and kept the 1 out to try.

To this container of sauce I added, garlic and garlic oil, some more fresh basil and about a dozen shrimp.  I heated it just long enough for the shrimp to cook and I served it over spaghetti.  It was yummy!  It makes me know that I can add many things to this basic sauce and have many different meals.  One of the nicest things about the sauce is that by using the processor you can not even tell that the skins were left on the tomato, after all, that is where a lot of the flavor is.

Now I have time to go back to my hooking!!!!!  Have a wonderful week everyone.
Doris

5 comments:

Sassafras and Winterberry said...

Golly, when's dinner? That sauce looks amazing. You sure do have a bumper crop of tomatoes. I love the color of the yellow ones!

Cathy G. said...

Doris,
Your house must smell delicious with all the fresh garlic basil and such!! What beautiful tomatoes and eggplants. I just dyed some eggplant color wool!
Thanks for stopping by my blog and your encouragement for the fringe idea. It's growing on me and may be the solution i choose for the binding!
Thanks so very much!
Enjoy your bountiful harvest!
Cathy G

weaverpat said...

The tomato sauce looks yummy! I had no idea that eggplant could be frozen. It's one of my favorite veggies.
You have been a busy lady!

Julia said...

I learn something new every day. I didn't know either that egg plants can be frozen. It just never dawned on me.

Your sauce sounds yummy with shrimps. JB

Joanne said...

Interesting about the eggplant - I thought they would turn to mush! They do look wonderful though and those maters - mmmmm - sauce - mmmmm - We've gotten 100's of cherry maters too! Our bigguns though are getting eaten by bugs so only a few handfuls of them are making it to the kitchen!