Freezing Oven Roasted Tomatoes

After being inspired by gardening and canning friend Cheryl, we stole her slow oven roasted tomatoes technique (from a new book "Put 'Em Up") and compared it to the version in "The Everything Cookbook" by Mark Bittman and some other web sources.

Simple, delicious, oven roasted tomatoes that end up with a "sun dried tomatoes packed in oil" consistency and flavor.

We did this twice. Tweaking the cook times each time. Our final answer for the year:

30-50 roma tomatoes, cut in half, green core cut out
Enough extra virgin olive oil to drizzle
3 foil lined cookie sheets

Lay tomatoes, cut side up, tip to toe on the foil lined sheet. Drizzle with EVOO. Set in a 185 degree oven for 6 hours rotating pans every hour or two. After 6 hours, turn up the heat to 250 degrees for another 3-4 hours.

Remove from oven. Allow to cool. Eat. Freeze in a mason jar. They will keep for 6 months or more in the freezer. Apparently they will keep in the pantry for about 3 months, but I am not courageous enough to risk it. Too delicious to waste on an experiment gone wrong.

Canning Tomato Paste

We are woefully behind in updating our blog. I guess pregnancy, an unexpected basement renovation and an early harvest will do that. Regardless, tonight we canned tomato paste. Using the instructions on this link, we really enjoyed the making paste process.

http://www.pickyourown.org/canning_tomatopaste.htm

For our own records, we picked a crate full of tomatoes. We ran them through our Kitchen Aid Fruit/Vegetable Strainer which did the work of seeding, peeling and coring. What we were left with was pure tomato juice goodness.

Although the recipe calls for 8 qts of chopped, seeded tomatoes, we used 8 qts of our "juice". We did not add the bay leaves, salt or garlic because our intention for the paste is to use it as pizza sauce or spaghetti base, etc. and we wanted to control the flavor at the time of actual cooking.

We did the first reduction for 1 hour and then strained out the bell pepper chunks. We allowed it to simmer for the last 2 1/2 hours (give or take) in 2 pots to get a thick consistency.

We ended up with 6 1/2 pints of tomato paste. We would have loved to use really small jars but we just don't have many of those in our stash and ultimately will use large quantities of paste at a time.

It was still a long canning process, like anything. Being able to skip the blanching, peeling, trimming steps, however, was a real blessing. Our plan is to make any of UW tomatoes into paste in this fashion until the plants give up.

Charlotte Mason - The Preschool Years

I established my blog to serve as a journal of my gardening experiences. I had no idea that as my children grew and their love for gardening developed that I would get more and more jealous of the teachers that would steal my son from me during the day and educate him outside of my garden. Maybe it is just more of that old fashioned life that I am clinging to, but homeschooling became appealing first out of a selfish desire to not be done teaching him at our pace in our way. The more that I learn about homeschooling, however, the more I have found great educational, social and family value in it's mission. The Charlotte Mason style of learning found us and won us over.... and today, we "officially" begin.

What a difference a summer can make?!

When we started this summer, we had a couple of key projects we wanted to get done... first and foremost preserve our family time with trips to the zoo, a stay-cation and visits with family and friends we don't see much. Thankfully, all of that happened. After that, we wanted to build the kids a sandbox, build a compost system and re-do the playroom. Our sandbox and compost bins did get done as well! The playroom.... well that is another story. It is still a work in progress. This first trimester preggo with "helpful" toddlers underfoot is just not as productive as usual. We are chipping away at it and no longer just trying to "get it done!".

A couple of very interesting things happened along the journey. The more the playroom came together the more we began to see something in it we had never even thought of before - a classroom.... a real space for learning and creativity. The more we worked on it and talked out loud, the more we realized how anguished we felt about sending Michael to school. We had already decided that he would have his pre-school experience at home, but the idea of genuinely homeschooling him snuck up on us from behind and captured our hearts and imagination.

Some may wonder what in the world we are thinking. Some may wonder why in the world I would take on this stress. I know that some wonder if I could even do as good a job as a school could for my son. But here is my reality. God made me a voracious reader and researcher - he also made my husband and I teachers. God makes all of us the first and foremost teachers of our children anyway. Our fortune is that Michael is extremely extroverted and easily enjoys and interacts with his peers and others. Formal school for Michael would be more about socialization than anything else and we feel that that is something that we can easily supplement through VBS, playgroup, scouts, other home-school families, etc. For years I have owned a treasury of resources on the education of character, good literature and ways to teach your children to be curious and industrious. It has always broken my heart that I would send Michael to school and let someone else get the joy of opening his mind. I want to do it. I want to guide him and nurture him. I want to observe his interests and his growth and tailor his education to his needs and his natural inclinations. I want to guide him as he walks towards the calling that his Father in Heaven has for him. At least, I want to do it now. Maybe not forever. Maybe for just a few years, but each journey does begin with a single step and our first is to hang the black board. The next will be to try this on for size.

I have not felt so invigorated as a mom - ever. Leaving the classroom and coming home to be a stay at home mom always felt like the right decision - but an impossible one. Now, I feel like it is coming together. I feel as though this is why He designed me with such a love for education. I am humbled, scared but most exhilarated. This journey is going to be an interesting one.

Is it August already?

As I said in an earlier post... June is the resting month. Once the 4th of July is behind us, things start happening and fast. Today is August 9th and I haven't had time to think about much of anything! We used June and July to build the kids a sandbox, the garden a 3 bin compost system and do a remodel of our playroom in the basement. All while harvesting herbs, some early peppers, some leeks and green beans. Yes... we did get some green beans this year - despite the rabbits.

Did you know that purple beans turn green when blanched and cooked? We didn't... what a bummer! I guess that I am much less impressed with purple beans now that I know that they will not retain any of their color. Regardless, we have several freezer bags of beans (better than we expected when we saw how much the rabbits were eating) waiting to be made into soup when the need arises in the winter months.

More to write... too many interruptions with the little ones underfoot.

Homemade Baby Food Class

I am "teaching" a class for new moms at one of the local clinics. Since I love growing food and making it into meals for our entire family, this one was a natural for me. I am excited about getting to use my mommy brain in a creative way. Most of the work on home made baby food 101 has been done by great women already. I am just going to steal from them (referencing them of course) and be the conduit between them and moms who are eager to learn about something that seems so big, technical and overwhelming. Thanks to www.wholesomebabyfood.com and "First Meals" by Annabelle Karmel, all I am doing is sharing my enthusiasm and their expertise.

What to do while it grows...

So I have been asked what we do while we wait for everything to grow. Sure, we have some early harvest, but in NE Wisconsin, the growing season is pretty short and "early" is relative. June is often a resting month. February and March are the seed starting months. April is the month of exhilaration when the herbs are shooting up through the snow promising spring mud and tilling. As soon as the ground is worked, some early plants go in and then the real work begins in May. A lot of hurry up and wait from May 1st - June 15th as we hurry to put some things in and then wait to put the others. June is the calm before the storm.

What does grow very well in June are herbs and strawberries. Basil in particular. That being said, June is our soup, stock, strawberries and pesto month. We roast several chickens per week, piece them, eat some for dinner and then freeze the rest in 2c bags for winter soup. The bones and scraps also get frozen into 13c containers and when we have 2 or 3, we pick a bunch of herbs, some carrots, celery and onions and make stock. Our stock pot renders 6-7 quarts of stock per batch. When we are bored with the chicken task, we switch gears to picking 5c of basil every 10 days or so to make batches of freezable pesto. Around Father's Day, we go to Pick Your Own strawberry fields and enjoy watching our kids eat more than they pick. 3 trays of strawberries, a couple of hours in the kitchen and freezer jars render us a freezer full of jam. Last year's uneaten blueberries need to leave the freezer to make room for the jam and pesto and so they also become freezer jam. By then end of the month, we have a freezer full of strawberry and blueberry jam, stock, soup meat and pesto.

So, stock is piling up with more on the stove and I cannot wait to switch into tomato season!