13) Roasted Tomato Sauce

 This is one of my favorite times of year at the farmers market. They still have all the summer favorites, corn, tomatoes, peaches, while all the delicious fall stuff is starting to make an appearance. Last week while at the Towson Farmers Market we saw lots and lots of tomatoes, which made me think we should try and make our own tomato sauce. I have never made tomato sauce before and while we are not huge tomato sauce eaters, we do like it sometimes. In fact the problem we always have with tomato sauce is that we open up a small jar and never finish it before it goes bad. So I loved the idea of making our own sauce and then freezing small batches for use throughout the fall and winter.

As always I am totally incapable of following a recipe but this one from Epicusious is the one I used to get a general idea. We started with a lot (probably around 35-40) of plum tomatoes from the farmers market which the Bee helped me wash. I then cut the tomatoes into small pieces and placed them in a Pyrex baking pan. While I was working on that the Bee peeled 3 small green zucchini we also got at the farmers market. She is a big fan of peeling with the vegetable peeler. I then chopped the zucchini and one small onion and added them to the tomatoes. The Bee then helped me to drizzle all the vegetables with a little olive oil, some salt, pepper and garlic and a little Italian seasoning we had. I then put the pan in a 400 degree oven for about 45 minutes, until everything had cooked down and was soft and juicy. After pulling the pan from the oven and letting it cool a few minutes, I took the vegetables out of the pan using a slotted spoon and put them in the food processor. I purposefully left the juices in the pan, so they wouldn't leak out while I blended. I then pulsed the veggies until blended and mixed the veggies back in with the juices to thin it to more of a sauce consistency. We ate some of the sauce that night and it was delicious, a unanimous thumbs up from everyone. The best part is that we have three small batches in the freezer for another day.