Too many tomatoes, zucchini, peppers? No problem! September 6, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in gardening, homesteading, recipes, wit and wisdom.Tags: homemade spaghetti sauce, how to use excess tomatoes, how to use up extra produce, spaghetti sauce recipe
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Silence Dogood here. September’s shorter, cooler days tell us that fall is here, whatever the calendar’s official start date says. But our gardens are still in full harvest mode. If you’re drowning in tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, even eggplant, there’s a simple and scrumptious solution: spaghetti sauce.
Ever met anyone who doesn’t love spaghetti? I sure haven’t. And let me tell you, you can put a lot of produce in a single pot of the red sauce. I do it all the time. Once you’ve made it, it keeps well in the fridge, freezes and cans up beautifully, and can be used as the filling in lasagna or any pasta casserole or the topping for manicotti or stuffed shells. (Note that if you’re canning, either use a pressure canner or, if you’re hot-water-bath canning, leave the mushrooms, zukes and eggplant out until you’re heating up the sauce for safety’s sake.)
My spaghetti sauce is vegetarian, so it uses even more veggies. But it’s so thick and rich that even folks who’re used to spaghetti with meat sauce love it. Trust me, I don’t, sadly, know even one other vegetarian, but everyone I know begs me to make this sauce all the time. I’m telling you, try it, you’ll like it. No, you’ll love it!
My basic spaghetti sauce recipe calls for canned crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce and tomato paste, but if I have extra ripe tomatoes that need to be used right away, I’ll chop them and toss them in as well. No worries!
But here’s a trick if you have a lot of ripe tomatoes you want to use in your sauce: Quarter them, put them in one or more big, rectangular oven-proof glass pan(s), such as a 9-by-13-inch Pyrex pan, and roast them in the oven at 350 degrees F until they cook down and their juices are concentrated. You’ll enjoy the roasted flavor in your sauce! If you have room in the fridge, you can do this the day before you make your sauce; if not, do it a couple of hours before you want to start cooking.
Note: Always use glass or ceramic cookware, never metal, when cooking tomatoes or tomato sauce. Because tomatoes are acidic, they react badly with metals, getting an off-flavor from stainless steel and actually pitting aluminum. (I have no experience with copper, so can’t comment on that.) I use my biggest cast-iron, enamelled LeCreuset Dutch oven when I make spaghetti sauce. And, just so you’re warned, you’re going to need a very large pot to make this recipe, ’cause it makes a big batch!
Okay, let me stop yapping and tell you what to do to make…
Silence’s Supreme Spaghetti Sauce
2 large sweet onions (Vidalia, WallaWalla, or 1015 type)
3 large, plump garlic cloves, or more to taste
2 large green bell peppers, or one large green and one other pepper of any color from your garden
4 medium zucchini
1 large box button mushrooms
1 large Italian-style or 2 Oriental-style eggplants, if desired (this is optional, but fine to add if you need to use them up)
1 large (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, or the equivalent quantity tomato sauce, plus 1 12-ounce can tomato paste; may add fresh chopped tomatoes and/or substitute roasted tomatoes as desired
dried oregano, basil, and thyme, to taste (or, if you need to use up your fresh garden herbs, substitute them, remembering that you’ll need about three times as much fresh herbs)
hot sauce, to taste; we like Tabasco Chipotle and Pickapeppa (or, if you grow your own hot peppers, mince and add to taste)
salt (we like RealSalt or Trocomare) and cracked black pepper or lemon pepper to taste
extra-virgin olive oil
red wine (any dry red will do, so I use what’s on hand: chianti, Cabernet Sauvignon, etc.)
sugar
shredded or flaked Parmesan for topping
To make the sauce, heat a generous amount of olive oil in a big, heavy pot, such as a Dutch oven. Peel and dice the onions and add; mince the garlic and add; add plenty of salt. When the onions have clarified, slice and add the mushrooms. Add the black or lemon pepper and a liberal amount of the herbs. When the mushrooms have cooked down, core and dice the bell peppers and add; you can also chop and add the hot peppers or add a splash of hot pepper sauce at this point.
Slice the zucchini, then quarter the slices and add. If you’re including eggplant, do the same for the zucchini-sized Oriental eggplant, or dice the larger, bell-shaped Italian eggplant, and add them now, too. These will add body to the finished sauce, rather than being recognizable on their own terms.
Once all of this has cooked down, it’s time to add the various tomato stuff: the crushed tomatoes or sauce, the tomato paste, and/or any fresh diced or roasted tomatoes. And once you’ve made sure the tomato stuff is well stirred in, you want to add at least a tablespoon of sugar, or more to taste, and then pour a circle of red wine around the perimeter of the pot and stir it in. These are the secret ingredients that deepen the flavor and make the sauce irresistible.
A splatter shield will definitely be helpful at this point! The fine-screen disc sits on the top of the pot and keeps spaghetti sauce from splashing up on you as it cooks down. You want the sauce to cook down until it’s incredibly rich and thick, which will take longer with fresh tomatoes. Turn the heat way down, stir from the bottom every ten minutes. Taste periodically and adjust the seasonings to make it the best you’ll ever serve.
Once the sauce is so thick it will cling to the pasta rather than dripping down, heat water in an even bigger pot and cook your spaghetti. While it’s cooking, make a lovely, crunchy fresh salad to balance the richness of your sauce. Then serve it all up with grated or flaked Parmesan on top of each serving if the diner desires it. You can put flaked red pepper on the table along with salt, pepper, and extra Parmesan if you’d like.
I always make a simple vinaigrette for the salad since the sauce itself is so rich, rather than a creamy dressing. Don’t forget that you can put even more of your bounty of summer squash, cukes, peppers, tomatoes, and fresh herbs in the salad! Everyone will thank you for it.
And there you have it! Enjoy.
‘Til next time,
Silence
Simply salacious. September 5, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in wit and wisdom.Tags: blood pressure, high blood pressure, medical myths, salt
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Silence Dogood here. Do you know that the word “salacious,” which has come to mean sexy, titillating, dirty, derives from salt? Just like salty language, language interspersed with colorful cursewords, four-letter words, and naughty (not to say coarsely sexual) allusions. In both cases, the point is that, just as salt adds savor to food, salty language adds a certain savory spice to life.
Since these concepts originated, reflecting the essential benefit of salt to life itself, the enormous value placed on salt by all ancient societies (“worth his salt,” “the salt of the earth”), the very concept of salt has acquired such negative connotations that God forbid you should even bring it up in polite society, much less ask for salt in restaurants or at anyone’s home. Don’t we all know that salt is the Great Satan, spiking high blood pressure?
Well, no. Those of us with low blood pressure who relish our salt, and plenty of it, have seen no increase in our bp levels. We think that, like eggs, salt has been blamed for ailments that are in fact unconnected with it. And apparently, recent research bears us out.
“Doubt peppers debate on salt, ” an article in our local paper, the Allentown, PA Morning Call (www.themorningcall.com), said this: “Recent scientific papers suggest the basis for a global crackdown on salt is not what you’d call rock solid. Two 2011 studies indicate that the evidence is inconclusive, or that reducing salt may even be harmful.”
So there, health police! I’ll raise my salt shaker to you as I pity you for passing up the food enhancer that has instinctively been sought by all creatures since we first emerged from our birthplace in the saline ocean. Borrowing a Biblical allusion, our salt has recently lost its savor thanks to health Nazis. Thank God for researchers who have continued to look into the issue. It’s worth bearing in mind that the Biblical reference points out that this is the worst thing that could possibly happen.
Please pass the salt.
‘Til next time,
Silence
WWBD? September 4, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in Ben Franklin, wit and wisdom.Tags: Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin maxims, Ben Franklin quotes, Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, Poor Richard's Almanack
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As most of you know, our hero and blog mentor here at Poor Richard’s Almanac is the great Benjamin Franklin, whom we consider to be one of the brightest and wisest men who ever lived. Dr. Franklin is the West’s answer to Confucius, and we’re sure he would have been regarded as a Buddha had he lived in India rather than America.
Ben Franklin’s knowledge of human nature and its contradictions, its capacity for folly and heroism, its strengths and weaknesses, its silliness and seriousness, its love of worldly pleasure and comfort and its longing for the eternal, remains unsurpassed. Ben knew people. He understood people. So he was able to speak directly to people’s minds and hearts. That’s why if a Colonial family had one book, it was the Bible, but if they could manage two books, one was the Bible and the other was Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack. They knew they could rely on Old Ben to steer them right.
To this day, we here at Poor Richard’s Almanac try to keep Ben’s wisdom in mind when confronting the situations life presents to us. In every situation, we ask ourselves, What would Ben do?
Tempted by some bauble or treat when your budget’s tighter than tight? “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
Starting to think you’re special? “A man wrapped up in himelf makes a very small bundle.”
Slacking off on putting stuff away as piles of clutter are taking over? “A place for everything, everything in its place.”
Using your house as a parking space, to grab some food, sleep and shower before rushing off to your ‘important’ work and ‘real’ life? “A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.”
Madder than hell? “Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.”
Tempted to gossip, to spill the beans? “A small leak can sink a great ship.”
Catch yourself whining and complaining? “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
Always taken by surprise by life? “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Wavering over making the effort to reach out, to do the good thing? “Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.”
And on and on. Ben Franklin has good advice to offer for every human situation. Living Ben’s way means living in harmony with your fellow men, keeping out of debt and distress, and growing as a person throughout life. Sounds like a good plan to us!
Channeling Ben Franklin. September 2, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in wit and wisdom.Tags: Ben Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, Hurricane Irene, power outages
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Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
—Benjamin Franklin
It’s me, Richard Saunders of Poor Richard’s Almanac fame, here today to remind everyone who’s still out of power thanks to Hurricane Irene—and all the rest of us, too—that there’s at least one bonus to having the power go out: It links us to our heritage.
For all of human history until the last hundred-odd years, there was no such thing as “power.” People lived and worked by lamplight, candlelight, firelight, and, eventually, gaslight. None of these was especially bright, so mostly, people lived by sunlight. Thus Ben Franklin’s wise maxim: Early to bed, so you didn’t waste expensive candles by staying up after dark. Early to rise, so you took advantage of every second of (free) natural light. Obviously, this would save money, making you wealthy (or at least wealthier) and wise.
I don’t know about the healthy part, but I suspect old Ben was commenting on the tendency of his fellowmen then, as now, to seek out the pleasures of the tavern after nightfall, which would certainly have an impact on both health and wealth, not to mention wisdom. Good point, Ben!
At any rate, should you find yourself without power for a prolonged period, rather than bemoaning the absence of TV, internet access, and the like, you might want to think back… way back… and try channeling your ancestors. See how your day goes without electricity. See how self-sufficient you can be. Try reading a book while the power’s out. And at night? Think about eating before darkness descends, and once it does, going to bed, so when dawn breaks, you’ll be refreshed and ready to greet the day.
Maybe you’ll find that you like old Ben’s schedule. And, as a bonus, bear in mind that doctors now claim that eating your last meal early in the evening helps control your weight!
Cordially,
Richard Saunders
