You say tomato...and so do I. Enunciate!

I am a city slicker. I admit this. Born and raised in the suburbs, I've never dwelt farther than 15 minutes from the downtown of whatever city I've lived in. As such, when I speak of gardens, I think of a small patch of land perhaps occupying the footprint of a car or, if we're talking a big garden, something that still fits inside the typical suburban back yard. Apparently, they don't adhere to these scales out in the country. Joanna's family comes from Erie, PA and both her sets of grandparents live out in what I'd call "the boonies". Her maternal grandparents have what they call a garden. To my city eyes, it's a small farm.

We went up to visit a few weeks ago and helped pick veggies in this "garden" due to her grandpa's health keeping him from it. Let me be clear, this "garden" is enormous. We have brought back about 4 giant loads of vegetables and stuff was still rotting on the vine. The following pictures are of just one trip.





















































Let me also say that there's nothing like fresh veggies that don't come from a factory farm. I'm no "locavore" or anything but I can definitely appreciate home grown organic fruits and veggies. I also appreciate her family's generosity in giving us these veggies. People pay big bucks for the stuff we just had to go out and pick them.

One of the things we brought back was a TON of tomatoes.
















A ton.

So, what does one do with tomatoes? Simple. Make sauce!

Not wanting to make a huge production out of this, I opted for a fresh tomato sauce that was essentially a light marinara. It reminded Joanna and me of the marinara we had at Lydia's, a fantastic Italian restaurant in Pittsburgh's Strip District that has daily pasta tasting specials. I digress...

The first step to good tomato sauce is getting off those pesky skins. The simple way to do this is dunk the tomatoes in boiling water for a few seconds then shock them in an ice bath. The skin slides right off.
















Next you should core and de-seed the tomatoes. I got kind lazy with this and let some seeds stay in. Let's just say I wanted the sauce to be rustic.

You don't need a picture of it and I forgot one anyways but mince some garlic up and sautee it with some olive oil in a stock pot. If you don't want the garlic to burn, don't heat the oil first. Put it all in at once.

Once you've done that, toss in the tomatoes and have at them with a potato masher.
















Then you basically simmer this mess until it cooks down a bit and thickens.

Now grab a crap ton of basil, courtesy of my roommate's herb garden, and chop it up. Yes, I'm a garden mooch.
















Once the sauce is done, only then put in the fresh basil. Serve it immediately.
















This resulting sauce stands well on its own or would be a great base if you wanted something to doctor up further. If you ever thought making sauce was daunting, now you see it's not.


L'Chaim!