Adventures In the Kitchen With the Boy

The boy and I, when we find ourselves with no children, have to be a little creative to keep things interesting.  There’s no chaos so we have to make our own.  We’re getting pretty good at it.

The morning started off pretty slow.  I paid bills, made the meal plan for the week, and the grocery list.  We set off to do our grocery shopping and had lunch.  I had added spaghetti to the list as I can make enough for both households but when I was making the list I realized that we have massive amounts of tomatoes around here.  So I asked the boy about making our own sauce.

Now, let me tell you something about my normal sauce.  It doesn’t come from a jar.  Well, it doesn’t come straight from a jar.  I’ve channeled Betty Croker a few times in the last 10 months and I’ve learned how to make a few things very well and things that none of the kids will complain about eating.  Ok, two things.  My cheese stuffed meatloaf and my spaghetti sauce.  Typically, I take traditional spaghetti sauce from the jar and doctor it.  But one time, they were sold out of traditional sauce and I had to buy marinara sauce.  It was even better.  I didn’t think it could be, but it was!

Heh.

You think you know where this is going right?

Well, you’re right.  There’s a story.  I will tell you this though…if you’re waiting to read that I’ve caught something on fire, it’s not going to happen this time!  No siree!

Anywho…

We started this process at 7:30… at night.  It didn’t look that hard.  The recipe said to peel, cut and de-seed the tomatoes.  I tried to peel them with a potato peeler.  That didn’t work.  The paring knife was taking too long.  So we decided to call Grammie to ask her.

She told us to blanche them and then told us how to do that.  I started the water and the boy went to the garden to get some more tomatoes so we could double the recipie.

I peel all the tomatoes and he cored them but we couldn’t figure out how to de-seed them.  His mother had rattled off so many way, none of them included appliances that we already had.  Then I remembered, that I had a little food processor that I picked up at Wal-Mart for $5 the day after Thanksgiving almost seven years ago that I had never used.  It was one of those purchases that I made thinking that I needed a food processor but I didn’t exactly know what for… well, that and it was $5 and I needed some more things to wrap up for myself to put under the tree from Santa for me.

Anywho, I told him that I was going to run home and grab it and when I was looking for it, I found my little hand mixer thing and threw that into the bag but then?

There was the Mustang monster blender, the one that originally cost over $200 that Becki and I got for $25 and when it came, it had so many pieces that we couldn’t figure out how to use it.  It’s been sitting next to the microwave for a good two years.  But one of the pieces looked like it was a juicer, which surely would not allow the seeds into the sauce, right?

I bought that back with me, too.

We cleaned off all the pieces and put it all together and flipped the switch.  Nothing.

We beat it and adjusted and flipped the switch again.

Nothing.

So the boy took it apart to see if he could figure out why it wasn’t working.  He was in heaven.

Meanwhile, I’m impatient.  I start running the cored tomatoes through the food processer making puree.  “How exactly does this get rid of the seeds?” I asked him.  I’m not sure what I was thinking, but there were definatley still seeds in there.

“I don’t know.”

“Then why did she ask if we had a food processor?” I asked.

He mumbled an I don’t know and when I looked at him he was leaning over the juicer piece with four screws and a spring stuck between his lips.

He finally got the machine working and excitedly, I placed the tomatoes into the top and turned in on.  Five seconds later I saw juice shooting from the right side.  It was then I realized that I had forgotten to put the cup under the spout.  I quick turned it off and he and I started chuckling.

We finally juiced all the tomatoes and do you know what we had?  A cup of tomatoe juice, some pulp, and seeds.  Six POUNDS of tomatoes creates a drinking glass full of juice.  Can you believe it?  And we ran that pulp stuff through twice!

We finally decided that we couldn’t make the sauce with just the juice and we needed the meat of the tomatoes but there was the issue of the seeds.  I tried to google how to get rid of them but I never did find the answer so we decided that we were going to make it with the seeds.  The boy swears that years from now there will be arguments when our children and grandchildren are attempting to make their own sauce with their spouses…. “That’s not how Mom/Grandma made her sauce… she always used a juicer.”

Heh.

Two hours later (and no I’m not joking… this whole process thus far took two hours) we put the sauce on and added the ingredients that it called for but I’m thinking that we’re going to be sauceless.  It’s not thickening, although it does kinda taste like marinara sauce.

I told the boy that if it didn’t turn out we’d just try again and he suggested that we just buy canned tomatoes.  First off, if I’m going to buy canned tomatoes, I’d be better off just buying the stupid jar of marinara sauce.  Secondly, why buy canned tomatoes when I have a whole freaking garden FULL of them?

“You have a point,” he stated.

Sometimes it happens.

Normally, I’d be really upset about wasting all those tomatoes, but I know that I’ll go down in the garden this week and there will be enough to try again.

So, I have to ask.  Do any of you know how to get the seeds out of tomatoes?  Because I think we’ve figured out that the juicer was not the way to go, but the seeds are hindering our process. I’d be ever so grateful if you would share your tips (or recipies with me!)

But right now?  I have to go help the boy clean up the kitchen.  We made a ROYAL mess.   But I haven’t laughed as hard as I have tonight in a long time and I needed it.  But that’s another post for another time.

I’m pretty sure de-tomatoing the kitchen isn’t going to be nearly as fun as the process was in making the mess, but at least I got something to blog about, right?

Ok.  I’m waiting for your tips.  Seriously.  Now that I’ve tried it and made a few mistakes?  I’m ready to figure out how to do it right.  Even if I have to keep trying over and over again.

Until next time…