Garden's bounty!

Ok so I'm back again. Again it's been awhile. Life happened. But the good news is so did my garden! With all the crazy that has been going on I've still been able to harvest a crazy amount of food!

My garden is actually starting to attack my upstairs neighbors. I planted runner beans and they took off like wildfire and have wrapped themselves around the upstairs balcony.

This year I planted tomatoes, runner beans, bush beans, strawberries, chives, parsley, and basil. I also had some surprise tomatoes that grew on the other side of the garden. I had planted tomatoes there last year and I guess some of the seeds fell and the soil and water and whatnot was all right for them to grow so I have more tomatoes that I expected!


So now that I have all this fresh produce I've had to find things to do with it all. So far I have pickled beans, I steamed beans and made a green bean salad, I made tomato sauce and canned extra tomatoes so I can do it again when I need more.


The tomato sauce was surprisingly easy. I took fresh tomatoes cut off the top and made an 'X' in the bottom with a knife and steamed them. This is so I could pull off the skin without losing any of the meat. Then I ran them through a food mill to separate the seeds and the pulp from the juice. Then saute some garlic in oil and add the tomato juice. If you're using dried spices add them at the same time. If you're using fresh spices chop them really fine and add them about 1/2 hour before you're done cooking. Cook the tomato sauce on med/low for 1.5 to 2 hours depending on how much water is in the tomatoes. I could have cooked mine for longer this last time. But live and learn! The longer you cook the sauce the more concentrated the flavor becomes.

There is no real recipe for this one. It's a little of 'this' and a little of 'that' until it tastes right to you. I usually use garlic, basil, oregano, parsley, and a little bit of sugar.