Scraps...

Amos already believes Michelle to be a great aunt.  He especially believes this when she is cooking.  And, when she is cooking, Amos is most happy to help her out in keeping the floor clean.  Here he is on scrap alert.

I have been hankering to try my hand at making homemade tomato paste.  Something draws me to the kitchen whenever someone staying here starts cooking.  I just have to make things harder, I guess.  Anyway, whilst Michelle was making a very healthy macaroni and cheese casserole, I set about making the tomato paste.

The whole part about pushing the pulp through the sieve was .. hard.  Weird, too.  And gross.  Here are the scraps from the process.

Except ... the part of me that is wanting to make more stock (both beef and vegetable) saw that bit of grossness and decided to stick it in the freezer, along with my other vegetable scraps, to toss in the next batch of stock.  This is half of the leftover bits, since I cooked and smashed my tomatoes in two batches, before moving on to the baking stage.  Why? you ask.  Well, I got distracted and after all the mashing was done, spotted the rest of the tomatoes still sitting on the counter.

This is the pulp.

I added pepper to the recipe and then tossed in some oregano.  Afterwards, I decided rosemary would have been a better herb, given the recipes I would use.

My thoughts about homemade tomato paste are:

• I obviously do not know what 5 pounds of tomatoes looks like because I came home with just under two pounds.
• This is a lot of effort for just four tablespoons of tastiness.
• Clearly, this is a far more expensive way to get tomato paste unless you are a grower of tomatoes.

Maybe my friend Caryl, homestead gardner and graphics designer and artist extraordinaire, will become a maker of tomato paste next summer....

Afterwards, I put Michelle through resume bootcamp.  She held up extremely well under the rigorous assault and ended up with a much stronger, single page draft.  We still have one part to do. So, of course, I gave her homework.  I miss teaching.  SIGH.

One of my lingering Craig's List items sold tonight.  My Cisco router found a new home.  I've been making up a new donation box, and I was rather happy to pull that out of the donation box and put the $15 into the box I use to pay Firewood Man.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!