Homemade Tomato Sauce...

Since I am up to my elbows in tomatoes, I took a stab at making sauce from scratch. I used this recipe as a base. I made just a few modifications, but more or less stuck to it. At the end of the four hours of simmering, I thought it was still too watery, so I added more tomato paste and then pureed the whole batch in the blender. Overall, it was pretty good, but a bit bland. I'll have to think of how to spice it up a bit next time. More garlic, more pepper...

For tonight, I made some homemade meatballs, too. I have enough meatballs and sauce leftover for about three more meals. And I also froze two quart-sized bags of just the plain sauce. So all in all, a good first endeavor! Maybe I should try pizza sauce next...

Garden Pics...

I've got this much produce coming in every day or so. It's almost too much...

The cucumbers are making a comeback! Yay!

Tomatoes ripening on the windowsill.

I love the way this pepper is changing color--so pretty.

Roasted Yellow Pear Tomatoes

Made these last night and they were pretty darn good--worth using the oven on a super-hot day. Surprisingly sweet and so very simple!

Temporary Tomato Disaster!

Sometime soon, I'll post some pictures from my un-freakin' believable vegetable garden. Seriously--it's amazing (but I can't take much credit...more about that later).

But just a short story for now: my tomato plants, which are now taller than me in places, collapsed! They were in cages, but the cages got pulled out of the ground...it was like a domino effect. The big one took the other two down with him. So picture me out there, in the 90+ degree heat, sun beating down, desperately trying to get them back up! After lots of twine, several expletives, and some prayers (funny how those last two can go together), things seem to be under control. Fortunately, I could just tie the cages and some of the really big stalks to the fence. There were some casualties--lots of snapped branches, lost teeny-tiny baby tomatoes--but I think, all in all, it could have been much worse.

Ahh, the stresses and joys of gardening!