2021, Family, Food, gardening, Kids, Uncategorized

The best laid plans

41 Comments

Husband and I are planning a trip to Tacoma in early July to see our daughter. As is typical of our family, the topic quickly turned to food after we determined the dates of our trip.

One of our daughter’s favorite things to eat is a pasta sauce I make with our home grown tomatoes. I can’t take credit for the recipe. It is Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce III. I make it with a tomato puree that I can from our garden San Marzano tomatoes. It is simplicity and richness combined.

2 lbs. fresh ripe plum tomatoes

1 stick butter

1 medium onion, peeled and halved

1/4 t. sugar

Wash and cook tomatoes in saucepan until they are tender. Puree them through a food mill back into the saucepan. add the butter, onions, 1.5 t salt, and cook at slow simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Discard the onion, and serve

In the late summer, I make jars of puree, the first step in this recipe, and can it. Daughter asked if I could bring a jar of puree with me in July so that I could make the sauce when we visit. I said of course I could, and I started to plan how I could wrap a quart jar of puree securely and transport it safely in a suitcase for our flight to Washington. Husband protested, however, and said that it was too risky and we could have tomato puree all over the place if the jar broke, there were perfectly fine tomatoes in Tacoma, and that since daughter had a food mill (a necessary piece of equipment for this sauce) I should just make it when we got out there.

I suppose that he is right, but the tomatoes last summer were extraordinary, and the puree is just terrific, and I have more puree than I need. I just hate it when common sense interrupts my schemes!

When have people interfered with your good ideas? What is your favorite tomato sauce?

41 thoughts on “The best laid plans”

  1. What if you shipped her a jar? Risky, too, I suppose, but won’t get on the clothes…

    Favorite tomato sauce is a recipe that includes half of a fresh green pepper at the end, in the blender, which gives it a really fresh zingy taste.

    I know some of my good ideas have been interfered with – thinking…

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      1. You cannot take a jar of tomato sauce in your carry-on luggage. However if you were checking your bags, you probably could. I would recommend maybe the day before taking the purée out of the jar and putting it into a Ziploc bag inside of two or three other Ziploc bags inside of a little box or a Tupperware or something.

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        1. I have tried this and my jar of jelly got taken (and I will bet a TSA agent took it home) and disposed of.

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  2. I was just thinking about tomatoes a bit ago. Today was the first day of my bale fertilizing . So as I was watering the bales I was thinking about what I was going to plant in them. I think my favorite tomato sauce is Barbara Kingsolver’s tomato sauce that I got from her “Animal Mineral Vegetable” book about 15 years ago.

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  3. I have so many ideas that are so good! If only people would listen to me! 😉

    My moms cheesecake is probably my favorite. And a good chocolate chip cookie is a wonderful thing. I’ll give up my good ideas for a chocolate
    Chip cookie…😂

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  4. Oh, but it seems so much more economical to take the puree in the suitcase instead of paying extra to ship it! I suppose having to buy new clothes if the jar broke would cost more than shipping it.

    Today we are shipping huge chunks of parmesan cheese to our kids. They are from the 8 lb slab of parmesan I ordered a while ago.

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I am an idea machine, but I have found that when I share those lightbulb gems, other people pick them apart: it costs too much, that will never work because…,my husband hates all change especially my room arrangements ideas

    However, there were many naysayers about my starting a private practice. Hah. Showed them. It was a good idea.

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  7. My maternal grandfather was always trying to get my uncle to tear down an old barn and build a new barn with the old wood. I guess that was how they did things in Germany. My uncle said it would only result in another old building.

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    1. Renee, one of my most persistent ideas, never spoken, is that you should move close to the Cities in retirement so you can participate in our in person Baboonish activities. Notice, I never actually SAY that.

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  8. Some of my good ideas involve places to travel to – even for day trips – and never get off the ground because Husband isn’t interested in that (and we haven’t been able to get in the car with others until just recently.) Others involve re-arranging the furniture, and I now put felt pads under ALL the moveable pieces, so I can do it myself.

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  9. Don’t I recall, Renee, that you have a bag sealer? I would think that would be more secure than ziplocks. Then it should be easy to pack and ship.

    I can’t specify a favorite tomato sauce any more than I can specify a favorite anything else. It depends. If you are talking about pasta sauce, my preference is toward the more puttanesca style sauces with a couple of quarts of good tomatoes, olive oil, olives, mushrooms perhaps, plenty of garlic, onion, peppers, basil and some heat and with the tomatoes crushed rather than pureed. I don’t think of that sort of sauce as requiring a recipe.

    Conversely, a sauce I’ve been making recently is from the Repertoire cookbook by Jessica Battilana. It’s modified from a recipe she got from Molly Wizenberg and its basically about six garlic cloves sliced thin and sauteed lightly in olive oil with a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. To that you add two 28 ounce cans (or the equivalent) of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes that you put into a bowl and crush by hand. You combine the tomatoes and the sauteed garlic and simmer that for a while. That’s only part of the recipe, which is more properly about the homemade meatballs you mix and form and then cook in the simmering sauce, but this is a conversation about sauces, not meatballs.

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  12. My basic sauce is a can of tomato paste, a can of diced tomatoes, and a half a stick of butter, seasoned with salt, black pepper, garlic, and onion.

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