What do I do with all these tomatoes!? Part 2

I'm in love with fresh, home-grown tomatoes. I'm not going to hide it.... it's true. And when we first started the garden, one of the things I looked forward to most was the ability to make homemade spaghetti sauces, and soups, and everything tomato! However, something that I was very unaware of was the sheer quantity of tomatoes that are required to make ANYTHING! So I planted A LOT of tomato plants....which, didn't do a damn thing to help the problem.

Rule #1 in Gardening: NOTHING works the way you want. If you need 1 green pepper and 20 tomatoes for a recipe, you will go outside and find 1 red tomato, and 35 green peppers. Everything ripens at different times, and there's no way to control it. It's feast or famine. Want 20 ripe tomatoes? Go on vacation for a weekend.... and you'll come home to 20 overly-ripe tomatoes. Gardens have a mind of their own. Deal with it.

1 red tomato out of 8! WTF!?

So, how am I supposed to cook anything with only 4 or 5 ripe tomatoes at any given time?!

Save them! There are so many options with tomatoes -- you could roast them, slow roast them (which we talked about in Part 1), freeze them, can them, dry them.... and I'm sure there are tons more ways that I don't know about.

In my opinion, how you save them depends on how you plan to use them later....

ROASTING & FREEZING TOMATOES

One of my favorite ways that I've been saving better boys, creoles, or even romas (pretty much anything larger than a cherry) is to roast the tomatoes with onions and garlic. I originally got the idea from Tyler Florence when I was looking up his ultimate tomato basil soup (drool). I made the soup. It was amazing. But I started thinking, why not roast the tomatoes, onions and garlic all together and freeze them so that next time I want soup (which usually isn't until winter), I'll have the hard part done -- and done with awesome tomatoes from my garden instead of sad grocery-store-in-winter tomatoes. 

Once I mastered the roasting, and the proportions (which is mostly personal preference), these frozen bags of roasted wonderfulness became the base for future soups & spaghetti sauces!

Here's How:

4 - 8 ripe tomatoes, sliced in half (they need to be good and ripe)

1/2 Onion (I like Vidalias if they're in season, or any sweet onion)

6 or 7 cloves garlic (skin still on)

Olive oil (enough just to coat - maybe 2Tbsp?)

Salt & Pepper 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

yummm

Wash all the tomatoes and slice in half & cut out stem piece. With your thumb, get as many seeds as you can out (trust me on this, both soup and spaghetti are WAY better without seeds! They don't seem like a big deal, but it's worth the time to remove them). Put in a bowl. Separate garlic cloves from the head (but don't peel them) and add to the bowl. Slice the onion in approximately 1/4 inch slices and add. Sprinkle with salt & pepper then pour just enough olive oil over everything to coat it when you toss it, but you don't want a huge puddle in your pan.

Arrange everything in a single layer on a cookie sheet with the cut sides of the tomatoes facing down.

Roast for about 30-45 minutes keeping an eye on everything towards the end that it doesn't burn. At this point, you can either remove everything from the oven, or just turn it off and let it finish roasting as the oven cools down. (I usually do the latter when I have errands to run. Just turn it off around the 30 minute mark and when I get home, they're cool and ready to finish)

After about 30 minutes in the oven...

When they're all cooled and peeled, they smell so good it's impossible to keep the camera steady...

When they've cooled enough to handle, peel the skins off the tomatoes, and the paper off of the garlic (it usually just squeezes right out) and discard. Then take alllllll the roasted yummy goodness and pour it into a ziploc freezer bag, squeeze as much of the air out as you can, label and freeze. 

It takes some time to figure out how many tomatoes & how much onion & garlic to use, but it's mostly to whatever your taste is. I'm a BIG garlic fan, so I probably use more than I have listed here, but it's really up to you! Just try to fit as much in the  pan as possible since everything shrinks so much once it's cooked, and again, it takes A LOT of tomatoes to make anything!

Last winter's tomato basil soup made with last year's garden tomatoes...YUM!

There is just nothing like cooking with garden fresh tomatoes in the middle of winter...

My first failure...

....well, certainly not my first failure EVER (that's for damn sure), but more precisely, my first Pinterest failure.

I knew this day would come...eventually.

Don't get me wrong, I adore Pinterest. So many ideas & projects that it makes me feel like I could be Martha Stewart, but better...and without the jail time. But the whole reason I started writing in the first place was to sort through as many of the tips, ideas & projects as I could and let you know what's awesome, and what's not so much.

See! I do the work for you. You're welcome.

So I knew it would happen -- not everything can work as brilliantly (or easily) as people claim, and I just found one.

HOW  NOT  TO CLEAN YOUR OVEN GLASS.

Dirty oven door & glass? Me too! See....

Never noticed it before, but EW...

Now I'm fairly certain that it was like this when we moved in 4 years ago. I don't recall anything exploding in my oven, I usually keep a pan on the lower shelf to catch anything because I can't stand that crumbs-on-the-bottom-burning smell. Makes me nuts. However, my oven still looks like I've been deep-frying turkeys in it and never bothered cleaning it once.

So I found a post* about how incredibly easy it is to clean. Sweet. Count me in!

Essentially you take 1/4 C baking soda in a bowl, add just enough water to make it a paste. Rub the paste onto the inside of your oven, let site for about 30 minutes, wipe it off, and you instantly blinded it's shiny sparkliness (so wear sunglasses).

goopy paste

I did all of the above..... except the last part. I not only wiped, but scrubbed! Not one tiny bit of difference. I mean, not only did I not get sparkles, but I couldn't tell ANY difference from an hour ago. None.

Yup. Still gross. And not even a little bit sparkly.

So after swearing for a bit, then double checking the box to make sure I used baking SODA instead of baking powder (or some other equally brilliant mistake), I began reading the comments. Most said "great idea! can't wait to try it!" but no where did I see "Worked like a charm!" I did see one recommendation to substitute vinegar for the water as it cleans better.

At this point, I want my damn oven clean! I've never even thought twice about it before...but now, you made me see what it could be, and how gross it actually is, and I WANT IT!

So being the stubborn ass I am, and not wanting to give up without trying everything possible, I decided to give it one last try with baking soda & vinegar (instead of water). I poured the vinegar on the baking soda creating my own little 6th grade science project volcano, then pasted it on my oven, waited 45 minutes, and scrubbed it off. This worked a TINY bit better because I could see the baking soda turning brown as I was scrubbing it off, but all in all, I'm not trying to even remotely imply success, because it's still quite gross.

This doesn't really do the grossness justice...

So between the just plain not working, and of course the pain-in-the-ass factor of the whole process (do you know how hard it is to clean all that baking soda off the oven without being able to really just hose it?).... I would most definitely say that this is my first official Pinterest FAILURE.

I guess now I'm off to try to figure out the proper way to clean an oven because this is just going to drive me nuts now that I know....


*I usually try to credit people by providing links when I'm referencing posts and ideas that are not mine. However, I didn't here because I wasn't entirely sure how the original creator would feel about their post being called out as a flop. So, there you have it. No need to know who to hold responsible, just know next time someone makes this cleaning claim, it's just not gonna happen....

Er. Mah. Gerd.

So I woke up one morning, and while laying in bed trying to convince myself that being vertical is a good thing, I see this...

I will never look at 'perderders' the same again...

And I laughed.
Then I got up, and I laughed.
Then I showered, while laughing.
Then I posted it on Facebook and got..... confusion....WTF people!?

But I'll stand by it. If you don't see the hilarity here, there's something wrong.....

Er. Mah. Gerd.

And for the record, my phone has since learned to autocorrect for "ERMAHGERD" (all caps, of course), "mershed" & most importantly "perderders"...

That is all.

What do I do with all these tomatoes!? Part 1

About 6 years ago, Jack & I decided to start a vegetable garden. I don't remember exactly how (or why) we started, but knowing us, I'm thinking it went something like this:

Me: These tomatoes suck. And they're expensive. I hate tomatoes.
Jack: Yeah, they're nothing like home grown...
Me: You can grow tomatoes? Here?
Jack: *eye roll*
Me: So why haven't we DONE THIS?
Jack: *eye roll + sigh*

For a city girl from New Orleans, I had all these great visions in my head of strolling outside every morning in my flowing dress and big hat among the perfect weed-free rows and plucking all the beautiful perfect fruit and veggies into my little basket and going inside and cooking up a storm.
I can't even count the number of ways I was wrong.
Silly city girl.

But over the years our garden has grown, and grown, and some years we have tomatoes coming out of our ears, and some years we're cursing and swearing that this is the last year. But on the good years, you get to ask yourself "What the hell am I going to do with ALL THESE TOMATOES?!"

I have the answer.

In the early stages of summer, when fresh from the garden tomatoes are a new thing, we eat them plain, on salads, on sandwiches, fry the green ones (when my patience with waiting for them to turn gets especially thin).... anyway you could imagine! But after a while, you start looking for some variety.

Purty.

And one kind we can never seem to eat fast enough is the cherry tomato. So this year, I've been trying something new that I found on one of my FAVORITE blogs ever, Kalyn's Kitchen... 

SLOW ROASTED TOMATOES

I've always roasted tomatoes (more to come on that soon), but I've never slow roasted them, and frankly didn't understand the difference until I actually tried it. Kalyn recommends using roma tomatoes (find her recipe here), and while they're my favorite, I always have issues with my romas, and never get mass quantities of them. :( So, first I tried this with a batch of creole tomatoes -- and being bigger than the romas, it took FOREVER! They were great, but having the oven on for 10 hours making the house hot was too much for me. Then my cherry & plum tomatoes started exploding, and I decided to try using them instead.... it was awesome!

Cherry, plum & roma tomatoes -- though, not the radioactive variety that they appear to be...

So I started with about 30(ish) cherry, plum & roma tomatoes and cut them all in half. Then drizzled olive oil over them (not too much), and added salt, pepper, oregano, basil & garlic powder. Mix them well so they're all coated evenly.

Arrange them all cut side down on a cookie sheet (I line mine with pan liner, but it's not necessary if you have a decent pan), and  pop them into a 250º oven and wait....

After about an hour and a half, they're pretty good and roasted. From this point, you just need to decide how dry you want them. I usually cook mine for about 2.5 - 3 hours (I prefer them still juicy), then I simply turn of the oven leaving them inside and let everything cool. Be careful not to let them burn though...

Once they're cool, you can either pull the skins off or just scrape the entire pan into a container. If I have a lot of romas and larger plums in the group, I sometimes take the skins off, but with tomatoes this small, often I just don't bother.

The finished product on an egg white omelet....

Breakfast win.

Add some mozzarella... and er. mah. gerd. Awesome.

I keeps saying I'm going to freeze some of these. I WANT to freeze some. However, I can't seem to keep them long enough to freeze. They go on everything and anything.

I'll freeze the next batch..... promise.....

FULL RECIPE:

30 (or so) cherry tomatoes washed & cut in half
1 Tablespoon each: dried oregano, basil & garlic powder
Salt & Pepper (to taste)
Olive Oil (just enough to coat -- approximately 1T)

Preheat the oven to 250º. Add ingredients to a bowl and toss to coat with oil & seasonings evenly. Arrange on a cookie sheet cut-side down. Roast in the oven for 2-3 hours depending on desired doneness. ENJOY.

So easy, shortest recipe ever.

Millions of Peaches...

...peaches for me!

No seriously. About a million peaches are living on my damn dining table thanks to our dear friend at the Georgia State Farmer's Market. And instead of putting them in the fridge as soon as they were ripe, my dear Jack decided that these could be his new creative outlet. Every day I come home to find the peaches lovingly arranged in a new bowl....on the counter....not in the fridge....going bad.

So now they are peaches with a rapidly approaching deadline. Time bomb peaches? Peach bombs? BELLINI BOMBS!.... oooh, chapmagne.... what? Nevermind...

So anyway, never having been a big fan of fresh peaches (growing up I always preferred the canned ones -- freak child, I know)... I've spent the past 2 weeks trying to do things with peaches before they explode. Boom.

Grilled Peaches with Balsamic Vinegar
It sounded great, but in all honesty, it was kinda Meh. Probably flawed execution...and lack of vanilla ice cream (I'm a chocolate ice cream girl, really)... And nope, I'm not even gonna post the recipe.

Crock Pot Peach Cobbler
Well, it sounded good... but in all honesty, it was such a pain in the ass that I don't see how it could've been easier than the real thing. And problem #2: nothing gets crispy in the crock pot... except the BURNED bottom (yep, that's TWO crock pot recipes in a row that have ended up charred.... and this is why I think crock pots should only be used in the winter!) And problem #3: there's STILL no vanilla ice cream in the house... hmm...

Yup... you can totally burn a crock pot.

Peach Preserves (or, is it Jam?)
FINALLY!! With the last 10 very ripe peaches, I made something good! I've never even attempted preserves before (or is it technically jam? -- what's the difference anyway?), but my mom gave me a vague idea and we went from there.

Here's what happened...

Seed & peel the peaches (yup, that takes a while)...

Then add the sugar and water to a pot and cook over medium-high heat stirring until the sugar is dissolved (mostly), then add the peaches.

And then you let them simmer.... and stir... and simmer... and add the brown sugar and cinnamon... and stir... and simmer... and repeat (don't let it boil over, because it will! I tried to keep the heat medium to medium low -- bubbling, but no threat of disaster).

And this was after 45 minutes. Whew. I kept breaking up the larger pieces with the spoon.... and stirring.... and simmering....

It was finally done when it had reduced A LOT and just starting to stick to the bottom of the pot - about an hour or so.

So 10 peaches made one VERY full mason jar full of preserves! I don't know what you put peach jampreserves on, but I'm about to find out because I have this yummyness now!

The recipe:

10 very ripe peaches (seeded & peeled)
1 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 dash cinnamon (maybe 1/2 teaspoon if you wanna be all technical)
1/4 cup water

Peel & seed the peaches. Add sugar and water to your pot and cook over medium-high heat (constantly stirring) until sugar mostly dissolves. Add the peaches. Bring to a boil, but then reduce heat to medium-low so that it's still simmering, just not boiling over. Add brown sugar & cinnamon. Continue to stir (occasionally) and simmer for about an hour or until it reaches desired thickness. Keep in mind that it will get thicker once it cools. Enjoy!

Bread Update!

Last week I posted about my new found ability to make bread that's not only edible, but AWESOME! (don't remember? read it here)

Well, today I crossed the line from awesome to speechless! What's better then home-made-fresh-from-the-oven bread? Home-made-fresh-from-the-oven bread with roasted garlic, rosemary & toasted pine nuts!! Er. Mah. Gerd.

This is how I did it....

I started out roasting the garlic. I took about 8 cloves (un-peeled) and put them on a piece of aluminum foil. Coat with about a tablespoon of olive oil, and wrap the foil up into a package. (I know this is not the traditional way to do it, but it's quick and easy and allows you to do as much or as little as you like instead of a whole head) Roast at 300º F for about a half hour. Take it out and let it cool off -- a lot!

Uh..... YUM!

Once they're cool, the ooey-gooey garlic awesomeness just squeezes right out. Easy peasy.

Chop the garlic & about 2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary.

Then I took the original bread recipe and cut it in half (there are only 2 of us here, so last time 1 whole batch was a little too much for us). Mix all the dry ingredients well, then add the roasted garlic, rosemary & about 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts (nuts are optional, but I love pine nuts!). Add the water and mix until it's all one big doughy ball. Cover with saran wrap and let sit on the counter for 12-18 hours.

I usually do this part at night, so when I get up in the morning, I find this....

Ok, doesn't look so great, but it's going to be AWESOME..... trust me!!

Scoop out the dough onto a well-floured surface and just make it into a ball. That's it. No kneading required.

shh...I'm resting...

Once you have a nice ball, flour a dish towel (cotton, not terry cloth) and shake off the excess. Then put your dough on it and wrap it loosely and let it rest for about an hour.

Rub the flour in, then shake off some of the excess...

Meanwhile, put your pot (with the lid on) in the oven and let it get good and hot (don't use anything with rubber handles... they'll melt!). Take the bread and just flip it into the hot pot. Cover it and let it cook for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and let it cook for 15 more minutes and you get.....

Am I beautiful or WHAT!?

BAM! I made bread. Again. And better (smaller, but better!).

The only problem I had with this bread is that I used the same pot I used for double the recipe and it came out much shorter this time (Well, duh. That's kinda how it works). And unfortunately, the short bread doesn't work as well for sandwiches. So I found a new pot in our collection of cast iron that will from here on out be my half-a-recipe pot. There's just one problem.....it looks like THIS...

ACK!!

So stay tuned for how to turn this disaster into a beautiful cast iron bread making machine!!! :)

But for now, here's the whole bread recipe in a nutshell:

3 C bread flour
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon dry active yeast
1 1/2 C warm water
2T chopped roasted garlic
2T chopped fresh rosemary
1/4 C toasted pine nuts (optional)

Mix everything together well except for the water. Add water and mix until it's all combined (you might need to add an additional small splash of water or 2 -- just enough to be able to combine all the dry ingredients). Cover with saran wrap and let sit on the counter for 12-18 hours (DO NOT REFRIGERATE!). Pour dough onto well-floured surface and make into a ball. Place dough ball onto well-floured cotton dishtowel (shake off the excess flour first). Loosely cover and let rest for an hour. Meanwhile, heat the pot and lid in the oven at 450. Flip bread into pot, cover and cook for 30 minutes. Uncover and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Immediately take out of the pot and let rest for an hour. DO NOT cut the bread before it finishes cooling completely (even if it smells like it needs to be cut and eaten immediately).

Bam. Bread. You're welcome.

Unicorns Scoot Rainbows

Sometimes I stumble upon things that are just spit your coffee on the laptop hilarious...then I share them so you can also ruin your laptop. Or keyboard.

This is one of those things.

Clean that off your carpet, bitches!

I don't know who these guys are at We Know Awesome, (and if they designed this or not) but they clearly know awesome, and I'm ordering a shirt.

That is all.