1. Pick tomatoes, wash them. Any tomatoes will do.

2. Set up a pot of water to boil. The first step is to blanch the tomatoes. Take a knife and score an X at the bottom of the tomatoes and drop them in the boiling water for 10-20 seconds.

3. Quickly move the tomatoes from the boiling water to a bowl of ice water.

At this point the skins will have burst and will be easy to remove.

4. Remove the skins.

5. Now remove the seeds, while keeping the juice. I found the easiest way to do this was to squeeze the tomato over a strainer and measuring cup. Since I had scored the tomatoes on the bottom, and these were small, this got rid of most of the seeds and juice.

6. Now chop the tomatoes up in whatever form you want. If you want the sauce to be a little chunky, give them a rough cut. If you want the sauce to be smooth, you can use an immersion blender or puree.

7. Now let’s chop a few veggies to flavor the sauce. Here is 1 carrot, 1 stalk of celery, 1 small onion and a bit of garlic.

8. Now (finally!!) let’s get cooking!  Start with some olive oil and all the veggies in a pot. Cook them 10-15 minutes, or until they start to soften/lose some color/cook.

9. Add in your tomatoes. Let the sauce simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30-45 minutes.  If the sauce ends up too thick, add some of the tomato juice you captured earlier during de-seeding. Add salt to taste.

YUMMY!

We made ours a generic tomato sauce. We could put this over pasta as is, or make it more of an Italian spaghetti sauce by adding basil and oregano.  I’m sure you could can this, although I only made a few servings in this batch so I opted just to freeze it. I can’t wait to thaw it out a few months from now when it’s snowy outside and enjoy it that much more because it came from my own garden!

One of the many things I never saw myself doing was starting a garden. Now don’t get me wrong – I have no use for flower beds and I still abhor getting dirty.  But there’s something about growing my own food in the ground that tempts me. Tempts me enough that we planted part of the enormous raised bed that the previous occupants of our house left us.

It is to my great joy and frustration that our yarn is exceedingly fertile. Vegetables = good. Endless weeds and plants that I have to hoe/weed/pull/curse at? Less so.

But then there’s the lettuce:

And the beans:

And the cucumber invasion:

(and there you can see the part of the bed we didn’t plant that I’m still fighting with!)

And even though we started a little late, I’m hoping for tomatoes:

And maybe one day a strawberry patch:

I can’t take credit for it, but I’m super excited about our blackberries!

Now if only I could do something about the “artist” formerly known as the chicken yard:

(for reference, we tilled the chicken yard about 8 weeks ago – what you see is ONLY 8 weeks of growing!)

Going back to work has been both wonderful and terrible. I am grateful for the routine, the normalcy, the tasks to keep me busy. And yet I’m equally horrified that life is continuing on, much as it did before.

Many years ago I noticed something odd. Often, I would go to the movies or the theatre. Sometimes, when the production was particularly moving, I would emerge from the theatre feeling like some part of me had been fundamentally changed and that anyone who hadn’t seen what I had seen couldn’t possibly be seeing the world the same way I did.  Usually the feeling only lasted a few hours or days, and then I felt like I returned to “normal.” I see the parallels now; the world doesn’t look quite the same to me and we have to try and find a new normal.

But we must move on, whether we like it or not. As I’ve been wondering how to do so, and more specifically what I could come back and post about that wouldn’t feel too trivial, too hollow, I was struck by it tonight. Tonight we borrowed a tiller from some friends and tilled our vegetable bed. We’ve been meaning to do it for weeks, but the weather has thwarted us. Tonight, before dinner, while it was still light out, we took time out to start preparing our garden. It’s a new beginning for us – neither of us has ever planted a vegetable garden before. And it feels like a metaphor to me – we’re starting anew and trying to move forward.  And that’s okay.

I’m sorry, you probably can’t see it quite well enough. Let me show you a closeup:

The night after we closed, Wes and I drove down to the house to see how easily the wallpaper might be removed. We peeled a bit and low and behold the vinyl portion of the paper just came right off. Starting to look better already.

Saturday, after a BIG trip to Home Depot we got out our DIF blue goo and smeared it all over the walls. A few hours of scraping and we got all the paper removed. What was underneath? Well burgundy walls of course!

Yeah. We don’t get it either.

Sunday we primed and painted. Our walls our now Cancun Sand, which basically means a nice cream color. Tape comes off tomorrow so this shot will have to suffice for now:

Of course the other fun thing about our house is that the previous occupants were serious gardeners. This means we got lucky and get a bit of the end of the season produce. We watered today, and collected an enormous zucchini, a squash, a couple peppers, okra, tons and tons of tomatoes (the cherry ones are SO good – and I don’t even like tomatoes!), blackberries and concord grapes. YUM!

ETA For more pictures of the house visit the whole album here.

My only briefly successful foray into the growing world was the Aerogarden escapades of this past spring/summer. And I have to say it was kind of cheating. It was grow lights, water, prepackaged seed pods and food pellets.

Last weekend Wes and I decided to try our hand at growing again. We spent a little while at Home Depot pondering our options and ended up with a Burpee Grow Kit. The kit comes with a plastic tray, a watering system (reservoir and absorbent mat), and some “magic” dirt pellets (they expand when you add water). At the end of the evening our newest project looked like this:

We planted a variety of vegetables and herbs. From our previous experience we expected the herbs to sprout within a 7-10 days and be ready for harvesting and transfer within 4-6 weeks. From reading the vegetable packets, we expected our plants to be transferable in about 6 weeks and mature in 60-90 days. We reasoned that this would be at earliest, March, and at lastest April, perfectly warm.

A mere 6 days later, this is what we have:

Those there on the left are the BEANS OF DOOM with root systems already OUTSIDE the plastic tray. In the middle you can see a melange of tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and onions. Those big sprouts on the right are the broccoli.

Not much action from the herb section:

Apparently the hubs and I are genius gardeners huh? We’re also in SERIOUS trouble.

It’s also evident that spring has sprung here. Everywhere trees are full of beautiful blossoms (whites and pinks and reds and yellows), tulips edge lawns all over the city, and it has rained most days a little bit, despite being in the 60s and 70s. Wes and I have recently decided to exercise together (he gets the credit for the idea, and for pushing me to do it) so now we go walking together a few times a week. Our complex is right next to a golf course and a pretty park area and there are some 15+ miles of walking paths. So far we’ve only conquered about 1.5 miles of it (that’s a good 3 mile walk out and back), and it’s really peaceful wandering among trees and lawns and furry little creatures, even if there are adjacent homes and golf carts sometimes. There’s a pond and several ducks right near our house, a creek that runs through the area and tons to see and photograph (especially for practice!) All that makes the exercise go quickly. What more could I ask for?