If you had a vegetable garden or joined a CSA like I did, then you probably have an abundance of certain vegetables. We are rolling in tomatoes! I have bags and bags of tomatoes of all varieties. Saturday was the last day for the Clark’s Farm CSA for this year. It’s a smaller farm than the other CSA, but the produce is top notch. So to get my last bag of produce was kind of sad. Not only will I miss the fresh, organic foods but I will miss the engagement of the people who make the CSA possible.
To address the abundance of tomatoes, I made some sauce and froze the containers. I made more sauce and canned them. Then it occurred to me, that you could probably use this information. So my next project is to make a video to show you these two methods and see how you can make sauce. The longer version is more like what grandma did to can tomatoes. In the meantime, this is what you can do to store those tomatoes until you have time to make sauce.
If you have freezer space, just put them in zippered plastic bags and freeze them. That’s it! You don’t have to do anything else to prepare them for the freezer. When you are ready to make your sauce or add them to soups or stews, thaw them in the refrigerator or gently in the microwave. The bonus is that the skins will pull right off!
Here are the two methods of making sauce 1) puree, place in canning jars and pop them back into the freezer. The longer method reduces the amount of extra liquid in the sauce 2) quickly boil the tomatoes and plunge into ice water, peel, remove the seeds, chop and place in pot with additional seasonings to make the rich tomato sauce. It takes more time but you have a richer sauce with flavorings already added. The last step is to either boil the containers or use a pressure cooker.
Once the video is made, I will post it and provide the link. In the meantime, get those tomatoes in the freezer and save them for fresh sauce when the cold weather and spend the extra money at the store for fresh organic tomatoes.
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