Beautiful Things

"Beautiful Things" by Gungor was running through my head this mornings as I began to make tomato sauce.  I had all these beautiful tomatoes just waiting to be consumed, some how, in some way.  What became of this fuzzy logic is the following:

Began by grabbing a good pot to heat up some olive oil in.
Set the burner to about medium heat and moved on to the next thing.

 

Started with about a half inch slice of onion and

couple large cloves of garlic.

Also grabbed some of my Rosemary (that had been

drying from one of my 3 bushes) and began to chop away.  Love my
Pampered Chef chopper ~ got through all of that quickly.
These went into the pot, with heated oil.  I then began dicing up the tomatoes.
Some were chunks with a knife, some got diced with the chopper.

Everything in the pot.  Just an occasional stir and let the heat & time

do it's thing.  After awhile, I'll puree a portion of this to get the

seeds and skin blended well.  Let it cool further and then into some

sort of freezer worthy storage container.  I've deliberately not added basil

or oregano yet.  These tend to be more tender herbs and should be added

in the last few minutes of cooking.  They'll get added later, when I am making

a sauce, soup, or stew later.

The one tomato not chopped or diced.  It was probably

the most sandwich worthy one out of the bunch and we're

having sandwiches for dinner.  Yummy!

What has probably helped the tomatoes the most, is that I

compost just about anything that can be composted.  As I tell our

boys, "if it came from the ground, it can be composted", meaning

fruit, veggies, untreated wood shavings, paper w/o to much writing

on it.  Other things, like dairy and bread type products, just don't

decompose easily and tend not to be good for the soil.  I know some

will compost with certain animal waste, but that just seems yucky to me!

I've also heard you can compost newspaper (but not the shiny adds) and

cardboard as well.  Haven't tried those yet.

So, later on today, more tomato will be bagged and frozen for later use in spaghetti or pizza sauce.  May even use some to make home made tomato soup.  Another yummy food!