Thursday, October 02, 2008

For the Love of Pizza Sauce.

I have been looking forward to making my own pizza sauce all summer long. Having never done such a thing, I was a bit intimidated by the process. On top of making pizza sauce (which I probably could have figured out on my own), I wanted to can enough pizza sauce to get me through the winter. Turns out, it takes a helluva a lot of tomatoes to make one pot of sauce, so uh, scratch that. We made enough to get us through to Christmas and then after that we're back to store bought.

I learned two key lessons during my maiden voyage into canning.

First lesson: it takes a village to make pizza sauce (or at least a kick ass mother-daughter team).

Second lesson: You need to make sure your tomatoes are super ripe before you try to put them through a food mill. They are supposed to feel like a water balloon that is about to burst. We canned on Friday and I think canning on say, Sunday or Monday would have made our lives easier in this department.

As you can see, my tomatoes (we bought an entire bushel!) were not quite ripe enough, so I ended up having to push them down to get them to move through the food mill. This is the mill I bought the morning we were canning, when the regular food mill I had bought was clearly not going to cut it. It's a good thing Cameron is not talking yet, or she would be able to share the many expletives she heard throughout this process.

This is her looking scandalized by her mommy's potty mouth.
The good news is that all of the hard work was worth it. The recipe we used was amazing, and having never made my own fresh sauce before, I was blown away with how wonderful it tasted. My mom coached me through the canning process (she is an old hat at this). I am glad she was here to show me how to do it (the instructions I read online had scared the sh!t out of me). Now I am confident I could do it on my own.
After a day's worth of hard work, we had about 10 pints of sauce. We canned seven jars, froze two, and used one for dinner. I will admit that I was so pooped after cooking all day that I didn't really feel like making pizza, but it seemed like a cop out to not share the fruit of our labour with everyone. Not to worry, Scott "ooed" and "ahhed" sufficiently, and Max scarfed it down. That made it all worth it.

5 comments:

  1. Great job! You are officially more hardcore than me! And that pizza looks fantastic.

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  2. Why thank you! We also made apple sauce. More apple sauce to come and perhaps some apple butter. I am addicted.

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  3. You fucking dazzle me, woman.

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  4. I also love that first photo of Cameron with the tomatoes and apples. That's kind of how I picture my life if I had kids! ;)

    J.

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  5. Anonymous12:08 p.m.

    Amazing!!!! I love reading about your food adventures. Your patience is incredible, thanks for sharing.

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