Well its the beginning of August already and we are slowly looking at things starting to point towards fall.
Our tomatoes (wild and planted) have exploded with fruit! I have to say tomatoes are my favorite thing to grow in the garden....you can never have enough because they are so versatile and have so many uses. I made spaghetti sauce this time with all the tomatoes I had. I got 7 pints out of it. I use all kinds of tomatoes. Roma, beefsteak, and cherry. I also don't seed or skin my tomatoes. I put it all in! :)
I don't do anything fantastic for my spaghetti sauce I just wash the tomatoes, cut them and puree them. After pureed I put them into my huge stock pot and reduce the puree by 1/3 to make a thick sauce. I cheated this time, the discount grocery store nearby my house had spaghetti seasoning packets so for really really cheap and I knew there was going to be a point where I needed to cheat to help me get things done faster this season.....so that's where I cheated. For the times I do not cheat I usually puree an onion or two with the tomatoes, depending on how many tomatoes I have. Same with garlic cloves. Then as it is reducing and almost done, I usually add dried oregano, salt and pepper. This is all to taste. So make it as you like it!
Here are the gorgeous tomatoes.
After pureed and reduced. You can see the seeds floating in there.
I have also found a way to seal the lids without boiling them forever. Right after I fill them and put the lid on then I flip them upside down till the cool off and they seal themselves!
Here is my gorgeous spaghetti sauce all sealed and ready to be eaten! YUM!
Same night as I was making my sauce I was making roasted rosemary potatoes with the potatoes out of our garden.
Here is Mr. Smith chopping them up.
Here they are after washing.
Here they are before cooking. I just put olive oil down and slightly coat the potatoes then put salt and rosemary and every now and then a little garlic powder and cook at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes.
We had a horrible tragedy here on the farm. 10 of our broilers had heart attacks. :( We let them get too old. So we know for next time that we can't leave the smaller ones to get a little fatter...we need to slaughter them all at once. We had 6 left and this past weekend 4 were slaughtered. Other circumstances came up and we had to stop there. So this weekend we shall be finishing them off. I am praying they make it.
Back to a lighter topic. Our zucchini have also exploded and I had so much that I could make 16 loaves of zucchini bread and still had enough left over to make stuffed zucchini tonight. I post that recipe later...I would like to post how my family liked it as well.
