Feeling saucy

With tomato season nearing an end here in Texas, I'm officially in a panic. What? No more 'maters? But... but... Slowly over the weeks, I've watched the surge of tomatoes at the farmers market wane. "One more week," Tanya (from the market) told us this week. "Just one more week." Well, fiddlesticks.

So I bought 'em all. Well, not really, but as you can tell from my farmers market report yesterday, I bought quite a few. Saving some back for tomato sandwiches, I got to washing and chopping and sauteing. Let's see. How did it all come together...

First I chopped a large onion and about a dozen large mushrooms, sauteing them in olive oil. Next, I chopped up some fresh basil, oregano, and rosemary, dropping them in the pot along with the softened veggies. Next were the tomatoes - chopped and in they went, skins and all. Part of my theory behind adding the skins is that I like chunky sauce. The other is that I can't bear to toss the skins and since I'm terminally lazy in the kitchen, it all goes in together. Hey, it's not prego. It's mine and it's better if I do say so myself. But I digress...

Once the tomatoes started to break down and release their juice, I added salt and allowed the sauce to simmer maybe 20 minutes on medium heat.  At that point, I had a lot of juice, so I skimmed some of it out into a bowl and added some flour, whisked it all together, and added it back to the pot in order to thicken things up just a bit. It was at this point that I added the good stuff - sugar. Mmmm, sugar!  Simmering... simmering... simmering... Maybe another half hour or so. A little taste test? Flavor - excellent. Tenderness - perfect. Let's rock and roll!

Leaving the heat on the pot so the sauce could continue to simmer, I separated my canning lids from my jars, put the lids in a saucepan with a little water on to boil, washed up my 1 pt canning jars, filled my water bath canner with enough water to cover the pint jars, and put it on the stove, turning the burner on high.

Once the lids were boiling in their saucepan, I moved them to the side and the process began. A little sauce in the jar, leaving a little bit of head room... on goes the lid and the band... set it to the side and do it again...

Six 1-pint jars later, I was ready to head for the water bath canner. The water was still heating up (no where near boiling point yet). That's good. I placed the jars in the canning rack and into the water they went. It was another half hour before the water started boiling and we could start timing the process. Once at boiling though, we were only 40 minutes from a finished product. Keep in mind, I'm sitting on my tush in the living room while most of this is taking place - all the simmering, and water boiling. This is my kind of work!

After 40 minutes in the boiling water, I extracted the jars with my special canning tongs and set them on a clean towel to cool. The sweet sound of the jars sealing was music to my ears. Every few minutes signaled the "pop" of success. I allowed them to rest overnight, then labeled them and removed the bands the next morning. They're ready to store and drool over until winter time. Sweet!

I'm sure if I was prepping food for a large family for the entire winter, this might be more of a daunting task. But really, on the small scale I'm working, this is so incredibly easy, it's a ton of fun, and, well, I'm going to be eating homemade, local pasta sauce this winter. Doesn't that just say it all!