Tomatoes!

Harvest time is exciting because it provides the makings for dishes you create the rest of the year.  Tomatoes are one of the more important crops we grow.  Of course they're great fresh, but when cooked up with other vegetables and herbs from the garden, they're indispensable components of some of our favourite meals.

Today the garden yielded up ingredients for cooking sauces - tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers and basil - which will top pasta or simmer with meat and vegetables to make a delicious stew. Everything except the olive oil, salt and pepper came from our backyard.

The components of a cooking sauce

I am a messy cook, just as I'm a messy gardener, and a professional chef, I'm sure, would cringe at how I put together my cooking sauces, but they're quick, easy and always turn out great.

I start by sautéing the onions until they're transparent, then add the garlic.  Then I roughly chop in the tomatoes, just taking off the stem ends.  Then the pepper (in this case a Hungarian Wax Pepper for a bit of heat) is added with the stem end and seeds removed.  The whole shebang is brought to a simmer and then slowly bubbles away until it's nice and thick.  Near the end, I'll add the basil, salt and pepper to taste.  A purist would shudder, I'm sure, but I leave the skins and seeds on the tomatoes.  When the sauce is done to my liking, I blend it up in my food processor until it's smooth.  I'm a firm believer in skins being a healthy part of the vegetable.  The finished sauce will be bagged in meal-size portions and frozen for use during the winter.

A variety of ingredients make a delicious sauce

Now a word about the tomatoes.  This year I grew Stiletz, Sasha's Altai, Gold Dust, Principe Borghese, Gold Nugget and Sweet Baby Girl.  I've tried to grow plum tomatoes in the past - I know they'd make the best sauces - but have never had much success with them, so I rely on my regular tomatoes to do the job.

This year we had a very cold, wet spring which got things off to a slow start.  When the first Stiletz tomatoes started to bulk up, I was quite startled to see unusual growth.  Several tomatoes were sporting tomatoes on tomatoes on tomatoes out through the blossom end!  I've never seen that before, but then this was the first year I'd grown Stiletz.

Cat-faced tomatoes - meow!

I snapped a picture and sent it to Helen Chesnut who writes a column in the Victoria Times-Colonist.  She kindly replied to my query and also put it in her column.  Apparently the strange tomatoes were the result of our unusual spring weather and sure enough, all the successive tomatoes were just fine.  It's called "cat-facing" although I've never seen cat faces like that!  And I might add, that after cutting off the odd protuberances, these ones tasted great.

The whole house is filled with the fragrant aroma of onions and garlic.  I'm grateful to be able to provide some of the food that will nourish us come winter.  In these days of skyrocketing fuel prices which push up the cost of everything we purchase, it's more important than ever to be as self-sufficient as possible.  Before long, the basic necessities of life will become impossibly expensive.  We need to grow what we can and purchase as much as we can locally, supporting farmers nearby so that they can continue to maintain their operations.

Enough lecturing!  It's time to check the sauce.