Using frozen tomatoes

When I first left the corporate world in favor of full time Teagan-hood, I made a deal with myself that I would work through the freezers before buying anything new. You know how scary it is to no longer have that sweet income that allows you to waste with reckless abandon... I would have vowed to eat my pets before buying meat if I didn't love them so much. Plus that would be sick.

So, the update. It's been a little over 2 months and the garage freezer is nearly empty. It will be nice to unplug that power sucker for a month or so until the new veggies come in. I just pulled out the last three gallon ziploc bags of last season's tomatoes for tonight's dinner. What can you do with a frozen tomato you ask? Well, sauce of course. It's way easier than peeling, seeding, etc. right at harvest time when you're buried under a hundred pounds of ripe little time bombs.

Here's what we do. First pick the healthy tomatoes from the garden and wash them really well. Toss or use right away any that appear too 'ripe' to make it. Once washed and basically dried, they all get piled into gallon freezer bags and stored in the deep freeze until they're needed months later. That's it.

When you thaw them the clear water just drains out. That saves hours of simmering! The peels slide right off too. No boiling water bath to ice bath. Just toss the little buggers into a food mill to strip any leftover peels and seeds and you're left with lovely red tomato goodness. Skins and seeds go right to the dogs in this house.

To make sauce from the puree, I turn to Chef Anne Burrell for inspiration: Bolognese Type Sauce. The secret is to brown everything really well. As Chef Ann says, "brown food tastes good!". If I have some leftover ground turkey, beef or something I'll use it. If not, I'll go vegetarian. Here's a link to the original recipe.

Bolonese Inspired Sauce from fresh tomatoes-Meatless
1) In a food processor grind up a few carrots, a couple stalks of celery and some onion. If you have garlic and like the flavor of it, go ahead and add it. Use as much or as little as you like, but don't skimp on any of the veg. You can add other things like green pepper to the grind too. Go wild. Add a little Olive Oil to help the paste along. When finely ground, put the mush paste in a large hot pan with a little more Olive Oil and some salt. If you like a little zing, add some spicy oil.
2) Brown the dickens out of this stuff. Let it sit to carmelize. Don't fiddle too much with it or it'll never turn brown. Taste to make sure there's no rawness in there. This step should take at least 15 minutes or so. Don't rush it.
2a) If you're in a meaty mood, add your ground beef, turkey or whatever you have after the veg is brown. Again cook it well. (BROWN).
3) DEGLAZE: Once it's a nice color (read you can't tell carrots are in there...) deglaze your pan with a little wine. I use whatever is open. Red, white, whatever. I don't discriminate. You'll need a cup or 3 depending on how much mush you have. Reduce it all by about half. Taste for seasoning. You can add more salt, herbs, pepper. Whatever floats your boat. They key is to make sure you cannot taste rawness in there.
4) Tomato magic: COOK OUT THE TOMATOES. Without this step you'll have a raw tasting tomato sauce... Ick. Scoop in one soup ladel of the tomato puree from the food mill bowl into the pan and let it sizzle down to being nearly brown and mostly dry. It'll sizzle like crazy if your pan is hot enough. Repeat for at least half of your raw tomato puree. The flavor is exceptionally full when you reduce like this. Taste. Season accordingly. In chef Anne's version she adds water and simmers it out to develop flavor. Remember her recipe starts with tomato paste. This one is fresh. If you feel like you must follow a recipe, then by all means go for it. I generally prefer to move right to step 5.
5) Eat! Sometimes I'll just put cooked chick peas and/or beans into the sauce and eat as-is. Sometimes I add pasta. It depends on how the spirit moves me that day. This freezes pretty well, but I don't have much evidence of that since ours usually is completely GONE in a day or so. If it's spicy, a dollop of sour cream or plain yogurt makes it smooth ans silky.

Happy eating.

Can I please stop hibernating now?

Every time I let Mother Nature convince me it's time to shed the layers, she springs more cold dampness upon us. Instantly, like magic, I begin to hibernate. For me that means cooking and baking. And eating. Bryan kinda likes the cold weather now - it's the only time he gets a hot home cooked meal!

The menu last night was a basic roasted chicken with fingerling potatoes, celery, carrots and onion. Fresh buttermilk biscuits topped with French butter were pretty darn good.

All of that was just a formality that allowed me to eat cupcakes in the open. We made PB&J cupcakes. Sounds gross at first, right? I thought so too. Then I started making them. Peanutty goodness (not for you my friend Mike...) After baking the basic cupcake they got an injection of jam, then were topped off with peanut butter frosting. What's not to love?

Here's the recipe I used: PBJ Cupcakes


The only change I made was to use convection bake at a slightly lower temp. I need to shorten the baking time more since they came out a little less moist than I would usually like.

Next time I'll probably spoon in the jelly before baking. Squirting it in afterward was a messy PITA. Teagan had a marvelous idea: add chocolate chips. What a kid!

Well, I should go now. I have a few cupcakes to conquer.

Speedy Delivery from The Soap Crone

As many of you already know, I'm an amateur soaper. I've made a few really nice basic CP soaps and use an HP 'poo bar/soap daily while the other ones properly cure.

While building confidence to use my newly build log mold, I have spent a good deal of time researching soap making, recipes, packaging and various other soap stuff written by the experts. I somehow stumbled on the Soap Crone's site www.soapcrone.com
through Google or some other blog. Her site is welcoming and soon drew me in.

I loved the photos and enjoyed the descriptions of each variety. Her brilliance shows in the somewhat limited product line. Other sites have hundreds of scents/blends that boggle the mind. Figuring she was the expert, I purchased her e-books along with a couple of soaps to learn from.

I soon received a a friendly email order confirmation along with instructions for how to download the books. The e-books downloaded easily and I devoured the recipes book twice before going to bed. I longed for my delivery of ingredients to arrive as I imagined how I would work these new recipes into my own creations. I wish there was a little more about scenting and specific process in the recipe book (temps...). Just like when baking a cake the ingredients are only part of the equation. How they're assembled is the key.

I lightly read the basic manual and found it OK for beginning soaping. I wouldn't normally have purchased a beginner book, but figure why not support a fellow craft person. Someday it may be me on the other side. :-)

The writing in both books is light, funny, and spot on - especially for the herbal additions. My lavender buds from the first soap class I ever attended do, in fact, resemble mouse turds after a few uses. Lesson learned. Amy you rule.

I also learned that once you are 'the' expert you don't worry yourself too much with fancy adornments or packaging. The bars I purchased, Ladies Lovely Complexion soap and Lavender Mist Shampoo Bar, arrived in brown paper bags with handwritten descriptions of the contents. Simple. These would fit in at any craft show, festival or farmer's market. I can picture them on a no-nonsense table and having people gobble them up.

The soaps smell wonderful. Not overpowering, but still strong enough to live up to their scent claims. I wonder how well the scent will stay.

The Lavender Mist Shampoo bar has no color additions and looks just like the photo on the site. Cool stamping by the way.

The Lovely Lady had a beautiful photo on the site complete with pink swirls. My bar was more of a solid muted pink.



They both have nice, velvety 'feel' when dry. I want to compulsively pick them up and hold them. I will give them a try tonight after I get good and smelly from the barn.

Summary of today's lessons for me:
1) Stop sweating the small stuff. Just get back to the studio and make soap for Gracie's sake! Mine is every bit as good as anyone elses - swirls, marbeling or whatnot
2) Packaging is the sprinkes on the cake, not the whole cake. When you have a good product and a loyal customer following the expense of packaging is just extra. Besides, the open soap encourages you to USE it rather than keep it in the knicker drawer or on the shelf to admire.
3) A witty, well-built web site with great soap eye-candy is an important key to selling your stuff.
4) I am a burned out course manual writer by former trade. I should be writing for my own profit. So long trashy novel. Hello again instructional manuals!

Be creative everyone!
'Destiny'

Momentum...

Do you ever just feel like your ship came in, then left port with you still on the dock? You had this big plan and all of the energy in the world to start a project, then, well, fizzled out? How do you keep the momentum?

As mentioned in an earlier post I am a self-admitted soap-a-holic. I LOVE making soap. I get a feeling of immediate gratification as the mixture comes together into a lovely color and/or scent, then a longer lasting sense of accomplishment as the little lovelies continue to cure in my studio. It is a true test of patience not to jump into the shower with a newly cut bar, but I happen to like my skin without the itchies. (Yes, I did once try out a choco-mint a little to early...)

I hit a bump in the road recently as I wait for a few ingredients to arrive in the mail. While waiting I decided to build a new wood mold. Have you any idea how many styles, sizes and constructions there are to choose from... Do I want a log or a slab? If log, wide or tall? My head is reeling with the mental ping pong of indecision. So, doing what I do best when bored out of my mind, I just built another simple 4# log mold. I want to try it out, but am still waiting for ingredients.

So instead I sit and blog. And lurk other people's blogs. Like 20+ a day. Rather embarassing to admit, but it's real. Where's that mailman?