How we handled the tomato avalanche of 2011

It has been a busy summer of produce handling. Our list of preserved items seems to grow by the minute. But the biggest conundrum, one in which I actually began to doubt my own capacity to handle it, was tomatoes.

Here is a picture of the FIRST tomato avalanche.

Um.. woa?

Some of these are garden maters, but many came from the farmer's market where the price was just too friggen good to not buy them. The instant buyers remorse when I realized exactly how many tomatoes I had just purchased is hard to describe. I knew what this meant: sticky, hot kitchen and a sweaty me desperately pleading with my irish ancestors to allow me this one food waste opportunity free of guilt.

However. None was granted and a few cool days did arrive.

That is when the fun truly began.

I began with making the roasted salsa recipe recommended by the sexy couple over at Happy Frappy. Great idea! For my first batch, I roasted the veggies outside on our home made grill. The charcoal made out of fancy wood lent an amazing taste and the salsa was tremendous. You know that when an Italian woman uses no spices at all something must be truly complete, whole in its own right. That is how this salsa came to us. Onions and peppers grilled, tomatoes chopped and boiled, food processed to your liking, then canned. The best part was getting to do some of it outdoors instead of in my humid house.

Next came a nice pasty sauce made with italian heirloom tomatoes. From the Roma-family, the tomatoes we used were meaty and fleshy and beautiful. After a few years of canning herbed sauces, I decided to shy away from it this year and go with something simple I could add fresh herbs to before adding to a dish. I found that once boiled in the canning process, I was never able to ensure the sauce didn't taste slightly bitter. This sauce is tremendous and it already being used!

Don't the look pretty together?

I think so.

Then we made some tomato juice, chili starter, and some sun-dried tomatoes. Half of the sun-dried tomatoes we packed in oil with herbs and garlic. Yum time!

I think this winter is going to be so lovely.

Mostly, I was so surprise by how easy sun-dried tomatoes. Chopped em into quarters, tossed them on parchment and then baked them for a day at 200 degrees. WOW! Easy! As pie!