This past summer I got really sick of seeing tomatoes. But one day I looked over on my counter and I had a whole mess of them. What the hell am I going to do with these evil things? I decided to stick them through a blender, uncooked, and can them. Sort of like homemade tomato puree. Amazingly, they worked out fine. I used a can of it the other day with some spices and veggies and made a very hearty meat less pasta sauce. It needs some fine tuning to get the Italian flavor up, but it was still pretty tasty. Now however, I’ve got about 15 quarts of tomato puree in the basement. Explain to me again why people spend so much time cooking down tomatoes in the summer for pasta sauce when they can just do it in the winter when it’s not so hot?
This past weekend I made some bread pudding from some loaves that had carried on past their prime. Can you say delicious! Very much. Why haven’t I every eaten that before? And it’s even better when you drizzle a whiskey sauce over the top (especially when the whisky is Southern Comfort).
I’ve finally decided that I’m satisfied with the No-Knead bread recipe and I don’t feel like I should keep screwing around with my bread making to try new variations. I don’t plan to get stale, but for the most part our daily bread is always going to be the No-Knead recipe. I like the texture very much, it’s easy for me to fit it into our life, and one loaf usually will get us through most of a week, unless we have a bunch of soup or something.
It’s amazing how much spare time you can have in the winter when you spend so much time putting food up in the summer. I only go to the store for milk and butter for the most part now. It’s really great.
Is winter over yet? I want to be outside and dig in the dirt.
Fat Guy on a Little Bike 
I always figured there was some food safety reason for cooking the tomatoes before canning. But I know next to nothing on the subject so…
Sounds like you need a goat! Just kidding Wifey.
There’s another post in there Matt. How about a week of winter local eating? In other words, a list of what you eat for a week and how much of it you’re able to provide from what you put up last summer.
Selfishly I’m interested in the play between your recipes as cooking is my weakness. How much of what you cook interplays with what you have leftover, sitting around, going bad and is in the pantry? How much of it is diet driven- what you desire to eat?
We don’t usually cook our tomatoes down – we consider this to be one of the best possible uses for solar ovens, and it does save cooking energy. But we also do the same thing when we run out of time.
Bread recipe??? Share?
Sharon
A goat? If you don’t watch it Aaron you’ll be blacklisted in this house like Sharon!
Interesting challenge. I can say that practically all our meals are predicated on what’s in the pantry, what’s leftover in the fridge, or in the cellar. Oh and the freezer.
You haven’t heard of the NYTimes No Knead recipe Sharon?
My dear son, you grew up with bread pudding, just another one of the dishes you would eat after the first taste. “But, Mom, it does not look like pudding”. I love it! In the cookbook I left at your house “Old fashioned baking”, it gives a small history on bread pudding. If you did not ,add a bunch of dried fruit next time. Yummy!!
You would NOT eat after the first bite!!
We got like 3 inches of snow yesterday, can you believe it. Suppose to be gone today.
I like Sharon and Aaron. 🙂
I’d be all about a goat if I were not in town! Matt is lucky I am letting him get chickens! 🙂
Baby steps, remember???
Matt, your getting chickens??? AWESOME!!!!!
You are getting CHICKENS!!!!!.
SHOCK, WIFEY!!!!!!! WHERE ARE YOU PUTTING THEM??????
I’m not concerned about where to put them, but what to put them in. My building skills suck royally. I’m afraid their coop may collapse on them!
You have lots of great ideas here. When canning tomatoes, you don’t have to cook them, but you do need to be concerned with maintaining the proper levels of acidity to can safely (i.e., adding lemon juice). Check out the USDA home canning guides: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html