I brought in 6 gallons of tomatoes this morning and peeled and cored them. To about 2 gallons I added chopped shallot and garlic, finely chopped basil, some seasoned salt, maybe 3/4 cup of honey, after allowing the chopped tomatoes to drain well. While the tomatoes were draining, I chopped the remaining tomatoes, chopped two large onions and a dozen large cloves of garlic, peeled and cut into thirds. 3/4 cup of my home-made, home-grown herbs, that make an Italian seasoning was added to this mix and set on the stove to simmer until the onions were translucent. Again, the tomato mixture was scooped into a coarse colander to drain. When drained well it went into the food processor and whipped up on high speed for two minutes, then poured into a fine sieve where I pushed the sauce thru the screen, leaving the seeds inside to sieve. When all of the tomato mixture was done, it went back into an 8-quart pot on the stove, uncovered to simmer. As the sauce simmered, all of that juice was put into another kettle and boiled until it was the consistency of thick ketchup, then added back into the sauce to simmer for another half hour. While the sauce cooked, I bagged the first tomato mixture in quart freezer bags, 3 cups in each bag and froze. This is for Bruschetta. When the first batch hit the freezer, I bagged three cups of sauce into quart freezer bags for pasta sauce. I have 4 cookie sheets filled with bags in the freezer. Tomorrow the frozen bags go into quart vacuum bags and get vacuum sealed.
Then Weds I get to make tomato sauce all over again. Its now apparent that I did not cut back far enough on my tomatoes this year.
