There's something about Romas

I am in love with Roma tomatoes. I am also in love with San Marzanos, but I don't think I will be planting those lovely babies again any time soon.
Romas are plentiful, delicious, easy to grow, and cheap (if you don't have a garden).
Making sauce out of these is wonderful. They are nice and paste-y so they don't require much reducing.

Here's what I do for fabulous sauce that rivals Mama Ragu's:

Wash and slice the tops off as many tomatoes as you want. Cut them in half, throw them in a big pot. Season with about 1 teaspoon Herbs de Provence, one green pepper, a quarter onion and three garlic cloves. Cover and let simmer for at least 30 minutes.

Once everything is soft, process it all through a food mill. Put it back in the pot and reduce to the consistency you like. I reduce it about 1/3rd.

Taste and tweak if necessary. You can serve this right away or can it for later use. There is nothing like fresh sauce.

Love. Roma. Tomatoes.

Brine your meat!

This isn't really a recipe...more of a suggestion. Brine. Your. Meat.

We have a wood burning grill, so brining is essential. It gives better flavor, but there is not much of a science to it. The heat fluctuates and sometimes it leads to dry meat. Brining solves that. You can brine anything! Sausages? Pork? Turkey? Chicken? Beef? Venison? Yes!!

Basic brine is a quart of water, and equal parts sugar and salt, at least 1/4 cup. Mix it together until dissolved, throw in the meat, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

You can obviously change this up. I like to use brown sugar and add cherry balsamic vinegar to pork. I add bay leaves and carrots and onion to turkey. Hot sauce to beef. Do the extras make a difference? I would like to think so.

Once done brining, rinse and pat dry the meat. Season normally and grill, broil or bake. You will never eat unbrined meat again.

Banana Jam

Jam is pretty simple. It is just sugar, water, fruit and spices of some sort. Kyle likes banana bread, but shouldn't eat it, so I thought I could make jam that tastes like banana bread!

You will need:

5 ripe bananas
Lime juice
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cup sugar
Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves...whatever you like! I just used cinnamon, about 1 Tablespoon

Chop the bananas, sprinkle with lime juice to keep them from browning too much. Boil the sugar and water, add the bananas, stirring constantly. You will want to smash the bananas as you stir. Add the brown spice(s) of your choice as you stir. This jam is done when you drag a metal spoon across the bottom of the pan and it leaves a path in the jam.

You can can this or refrigerate it. This made about 1 1/3 pints. I canned it for 10 minutes in a boiling water canner.

This is good with peanut butter. Slice a donut in half and make a sandwich with this and some peanut butter.

Roasted Roma (and San Marzano) tomatoes

These are delicious. I stumbled on this recipe last year and Oh. My. Goodness. I planted a ton of Romas this year just to make this "sauce". I decided to add San Marzano tomatoes to this recipe, but you don't have to!

I always can this recipe. I have never served it fresh. If you are going to can these lovelies, add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice before canning and 1-2 Tablespoons brown sugar BEFORE SERVING.

You will need:
As many Roma tomatoes as you like
Salt
Pepper
Diced onion (about 1/4 amount of tomatoes)
4-8 cloves of garlic
Italian seasoning

Lemon juice for canning
Brown sugar for serving

This is pretty simple! Turn on your broiler and while it is warming up, get your tomatoes ready. Slice off the top and core them. This makes it much easier to seed them later. Place the tomatoes on a sheet along with the garlic (as much as you like) and put them in the oven under the broiler. Broil until the skins are brown and bubbly.

Remove from the sheet and put tomatoes and garlic in a paper bag until they cool enough to handle. About 15 minutes.

Remove skins from tomatoes once cool. Slice and seed tomatoes. Remove garlic from papery skins. Combine all ingredients in a pan; tomatoes, onion, garlic, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning to your liking. Heat to boiling.

If you are going to can this, do it now. Add the lemon juice and process for 1 hr 25 min in a boiling water canner. To serve from canned, warm over medium heat, smush tomatoes and add at least 1 Tablespoon of brown sugar.

To serve fresh, just smush the tomatoes and add the brown sugar.

This stuff is like crack. I use it all the time. It works with beef and chicken. It is good without meat.

Try it and you will never buy canned sauce. Ever.

Carrot Cake Jam

This is the life of a stay-at-home mom: "The laundry is done, the floors are clean (for now), one kid is outside and one is napping, what should I do? Hmmm...make jam!"
Let me be clear, I do not like jam and I do not like Carrot Cake. Not one bit. But my husband does, so he benefits from my strange cooking binges. Even with my aversion to both parts of this concoction, I must admit it is pretty darn good. Spread this on a bagel with cream cheese and you will be glad you did.

You will need:

1 1/2 cups shredded carrots
1 1/2 cups peeled, sliced pears
20 oz. can of crushed pineapple with juice
3 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon powdered clove
1 pkg. pectin
6 1/2 cups sugar

**If you want to can this jam, start warming the jars now! See below for more info.

Combine first 7 ingredients in a large saucepan, simmer for about 15 minutes until the pears are soft. Stir if you are worried about anything sticking.

Remove from heat, stir in pectin. Bring to a boil, add sugar. Stir, bring to a rolling boil for one minute. At this point the jam is done. It is up to you if you want to can this or refrigerate this. This will make about 7 or 8 half pints.

**Canning jam is easy. If you have never canned before, this is a good place to start. Wash jars. Put just jars in canner, cover with water, start it boiling!**

Place lids in a bowl or pan with hot, not boiling, water until ready. OK...now your jelly is done and your jars are warm. Fill them up! One at a time, of course. Remove one jar from the canner, fill it almost to the top, wipe the lip, put the lid on, and tighten a band around it. Put it back in the water bath and repeat until you are out of jam. Make sure your canner water is boiling, and if it is, you are ready to go! Cover and process for 10 minutes.

When the jars are done, let them cool for awhile and you can check if they are 'done' by seeing if the tops pop. If they do, then your canning didn't stick and you will have to refrigerate the unsealed jars.

You can find some variations of this on line, have you tried different ingredients?

Slow roasted tomatoes

I don't know what the deal is with tomatoes this summer. I usually have tons by now...
So, the random tomato harvest has led to improvisation. I like to can the tomatoes, but canning 2 pints at a time hardly seems worth it. So I tried pickling some cherry tomatoes (eh, not great) and roasting some.
There are a few random tomatoes thrown in: Better Boys, Romas, and cherry.
These are great to keep in the fridge or freeze for later use. You really can't can these unless you are wanting a sauce consistency. They will fall apart during the canning process.
You will need:
Tomatoes! Whatever you have lying around.
Salt
Pepper
4-5 cloves garlic unpeeled
Some onion
Olive oil

Heat oven to 300°.

Cut small tomatoes in half, quarter Roma sized tomatoes, cut larger ones in eighths. Lay on a baking sheet with a few onion slices if you like and unpeeled garlic. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast for 2 hours.

For freezing, allow the tomatoes to cool and freeze in 1 cup portions in freezer bags. They will add nice flavor to sauces or stews during the cold winter months! You can use them fresh for a nice spread on crusty bread or in a salad.

Use for anything pulled pork

This is a basic crock pot pork recipe. What is great about this is that it is an excellent base. What I mean is that you can keep this in the fridge and use it for several very diverse meals. We used it two nights, first night I made gravy and mashed potatoes. Second night I simmered the leftovers in Pepsi (don't use Coke) and salsa, broiled them and served up delicious carnitas.

You will need:

3-4 pound pork loin roast
1 pink lady apple (or honey crisp) thinly sliced
*1 onion, diced
*3 cloves garlic, crushed
*Parsley
1 cup chicken broth
Salt, pepper

Salt and pepper meat. Brown on all sides over medium- high heat.

Combine starred ingredients.

Pour chicken broth in crock. Place roast in crock. Put a few slits in the roast large enough for the apple slices. Put apples in the slices. Top with onion/garlic/parsley mix. Cook on low for 6 hours.

You can shred this pork when cooked, with apples or without; with onions or without. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with this so I took the apples out.

I would also recommend this pork with BBQ sauce on a Hawaiian roll. Yum.