My Day in Pasta Sauce

Yesterday I spent the whole live-long day in the kitchen. I was a tired pup when I was finished. Usually, I spread the pasta sauce over two days, but I did all of it yesterday. It made for a lot of time on my feet. When I was finished, I had nine quarts of deliciousness.

A few years ago, I learned a way to make this job easier. I used to score, blanch, and skin the tomatoes. Then, somehow, I got the idea to roast them instead. I put them in a convection oven set to 425°F and roast them until they're shriveled and spotty brown.

When they're done in the oven, I can pluck the skins off with tongs. Amazing!

The yield is a little less. A lot of juice cooks off of them. It means the sauce cooks down faster though. I've used the liquid when canning plain tomatoes. This year, I saved it all to a freezer container, and I'll use it like veggie stock. Some people also dehydrate the skins and turn them to powder. I haven't tried that, and I probably never will.

Canning is a lot of work, but it's worth it when winter sets in, and I have the brightness of fresh tomatoes sitting on my pantry shelves. As I was putting things away, I noticed Smitty was enjoying the afternoon sunshine from his catio. He loves being outside in the morning. In the afternoon, he's perfectly content to nap on his perch in the catio.

Before getting started on the pasta sauce, I made a little more progress on the final snowflake. This one has a lot of beading, and so I don't expect to finish it before the end of the week. 

I'm going to have to spend some time this week making up some new stitcheries. Our trip is going to be short, but I don't want to run out of things to stitch on.

The sky was kind of moody when I woke up this morning. This was the view through the living room windows.

Looking off in the direction of the wind turbine, it looked like this:

While I was out, I noticed this blooming sunflower. It's the one sunflower near the house that survived the onslaught by squirrels. They tried to chew it down, but it was tougher than they were

Situation is normal in Kittyland this morning. Smitty is taking in the morning sun.

Sadie is snuggled up in her flannel quilt.

I'll have one more day of canning today, and then I'm calling it quits for the season. I thought I might pressure can some beets. Many of you have mentioned the shortage of lids for canning. I have plenty of lids, but I'm running out of jars. I still have quarts and half-pints. Beets would be done in pints, and those are running out at this point. I'll be using the last of them for salsa today, and I'll use most of the rest of my half-pint jars for tomato jam. Canning shouldn't take all day today, and so I'm hoping to get back to my challenge quilt by this afternoon.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. Do you remember me talking about our Jeep getting "ducked" yesterday?

It seems the practice originated in Canada, so Hey there, Canada! You can read the story behind it right here.

Did you hear that? It's the sound of the whip cracking. Time to get to work. It's the last day of August. Enjoy it. As of tomorrow, it's suddenly September.