Whether you prefer to call this time of year “late summer” or “early autumn”, there is no doubt that tomato season is in full swing. Local farmer’s markets, grocery stores and home garden stands are bursting with fresh tomatoes of countless varieties.

One of the easiest ways to preserve the unique flavour of summer vegetables, especially tomatoes, is by making a basic, roasted tomato sauce that can be adapted later on when the winter chill has set in and the tastes of summer have faded from our taste buds. Roasted sauce requires very little effort, and roasting the tomatoes brings out a layer of richness in taste that fresh tomatoes simply do not possess. The sauce can be frozen and enjoyed for months to come.

Roma tomatoes are the ideal variety, since they are a paste tomato containing few seeds, but any variety will work just as well.

For each batch of roasted tomato sauce, you will need :

• Approximately 25 Roma tomatoes. This number will vary with the variety used. Essentially, you will need enough tomatoes, halved, to cover a large baking sheet, cut side down.
• Two cloves of garlic, peeled.
• Half a medium-sized yellow onion.
• Extra virgin olive oil.
• Coarse salt and fresh pepper, to taste.

To make the sauce:

• Pre-heat oven to 375°F.
• Wash and core the tomatoes.
• Using a sharp paring knife, remove the core and stem, if present, from the tomatoes.
• Slice the tomatoes in half and place, cut side down, on a baking sheet or disposable aluminum oven liner.
• Tuck peeled garlic cloves in among the tomatoes.
• Slice the onion in half, peel, and then slice. Separate onion pieces and scatter among tomatoes.
• Drizzle all with olive oil.
• Sprinkle salt and pepper over all.
• Roast in the oven for approximately 40 minutes, or until tomatoes are soft and skins begin to brown.
• Transfer roasted tomatoes in batches to a blender and pulse until the sauce has reached the desired consistency.
• Transfer sauce into Ziploc freezer bags, marked clearly with the date and contents. Freeze bags horizontally on a cookie sheet. Once the bags are frozen, store them in the most convenient way in your freezer.

This sauce can be adopted for use in pasta recipes, Mexican cooking, or simply slathered over a fresh crust of Italian bread, to be enjoyed during a snowstorm. This sauce is exceptionally good when fresh or dried herbs are added before eating.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of cooking with fresh tomatoes this season, head on out to your local farmer’s market to find some before tomato season winds completely down for the year!

I hope readers of this site don’t mind how much I’ve been focusing on food lately. It’s kind of hard not to at this time of year. A vegetable gardener frets and stews all season long, waiting for this time of year when he or she finally gets to eat everything that’s been growing!

I didn’t grow any beets this year. I didn’t bother to try, because in past years the rabbits have eaten them. I might try next year with my little row greenhouse, since it seemed to keep the rabbits away long enough for us to grow lettuce and cabbage this year.

Last Friday I stopped by one of our local farmer’s markets and bought a half bushel of cucumbers and a half bushel of beets. My mom had been saying she wanted to pickle some beets, so I grabbed enough for us both to make some. I’ve never pickled beets before, and actually only started liking to eat them in the last couple of years. Graham calls them “beetroots”, just like that, as though “beet” and “root” are smushed together to form one word.

The most important piece of advice I can give you if you decide to pickle some beets, is to keep a cloth nearby at all times, and expect a few little purple stains here and there. You can at least prevent your kitchen countertop from staining by wiping up any beet “blood” as soon as possible.

Beets need a good scrubbing before you cook them, and I like to use a cheap nailbrush to do this since scrubbing with my hands isn’t sufficient to get all of the dirt off of the beets.

You also might need to do a little bit of kitchen math when planning out your batch o’ beets. For instance, the recipe I’m using calls for 10 cups of prepared beets. A table at the back informs me that 1 lb. of raw beets will produce 2 cups of prepared beets. The recipe calls for 10 cups of prepared beets, which means I need 5 lbs. of raw beets to produce the 10 cups I need for canning. The recipe also says that it will result in about 6, 500 mL (or pint) jars, but the only ones I have on hand are 1 L (quart) jars, so I’m using three of those instead. (You know the old saying, “Six of one, half dozen of the other…”?)

You also might like to consider warning your house mates that you are planning to cook and peel beets. This is so they don’t mistakenly think they’ve come upon a grisly murder scene when they find you and your kitchen spattered with blood red beet juice.

Here are my beets, washed and ready to be cooked. The colour is really spectacular, don’t you think? I often wonder if pioneer women used beets to dye cloth.

Place the beets in a large pot and cover with water. Boil, like you would potatoes, for 20 to 40 minutes. When the beets are cooked, drain them and run them under cool water. You will be able to rub the skins off by applying pressure with your thumb and rubbing back and forth. Remove the stem and root ends, and cut into whatever sized pieces you prefer.

I like a wedge shape.

To make the brine, combine 2 1/2 cups of white vinegar, 1 cup of water, 1 cup of granulated sugar, and a spice bag containing 3 tbsp. pickling spice. Bring to a boil and let boil gently for 15 minutes until the spices have infused the liquid.

Once your brine is infused, remove the spice bag and add the beets to the pot. Return to a boil. Use a slotted spoon to pack your jar with the cooked and peeled beets, then add the pickling juice to the jars, leaving a 1/4 inch head space. Process in a boiling water canner for 30 minutes.

Unfortunately the brine mixture I made only filled two quart jars instead of the three I was hoping for. The jars are really a beautiful colour, and I’m sure the beets will be delicious, but I’m not sure I would do these every year. There are a couple of variations listed in my recipe book, including one using cloves and cinnamon instead of pickling spice, so maybe I will try one batch like that, using pint jars as called for.

I’m off to wash my hands.

(And remember to think globally, act locally! Buy your food at local farmer’s markets whenever possible.)

I also have to thank Rob from WildCraft for naming Playing in the Dirt as his Blog of the Month. He said some very kind words there about this website. Thanks, Rob!

My good friend Kolleen shared with me her pickle recipe. I haven’t tried eating her pickles, but I plan to make a batch of the Kosher Dills this long weekend. Of course I will label them, “Kolleen’s Kosher Dills”.

Kosher Dill Pickles

8 cups of vinegar
8 cups of water

Bring the two of them to a boil.
Sterilize your jars in a hot bath.

Pack in each one the following:

1 finely chopped clove of garlic
1 tsp of pickling spice
1 tsp of pickling salt
1 head of dill (Koll uses a clump)

(If you want crunchy pickles also add 1 1/2 tsp of Bernadin’ss Pickle Crisp.)

Add your cukes and fill to within 1/4 inch of top of the jar with your brine.

Hand tighten lid on the jars and return to a 15 minute boil. Take out of boiler and allow to cool. Remember to check the lids to make sure they POPPED!!

Bread and Butter Pickles

20 cups of thinly sliced cukes
8 cups of thinly sliced white onion

To that add 1/3 cup of pickling salt.
All to sit 30 minutes then drain excess water off.

To make brine:

3 cups pickling vinegar
5 cups white sugar
1 sachet of a 1/4 cup of pickling spice
1 tsp of turmeric
1 tsp of mustard seed
1 tsp of celery seed

Bring the above to a boil.

Add cukes and onions, return brine to a boil.

Pour into sterilized jars and hand tighten lids.

Remember to wait for the POP!

It’s officially September! For many gardeners, this time of year is marked not only by brisk mornings, dewy toes and the bittersweet appearance of one’s breath hanging in the air, but the preservation of the harvest.

I’ve discovered the great joy that comes from canning the fruits of my gardening labour. I’m hooked. I need more jars!

So far this season I have made “Zany Zucchini Pickles”, “Zesty Zucchini Relish”, “Red Hot Sauce”, Mexican- and Italian-style tomatoes, “Garden Vegetable Salsa” and most recently “Dill Sandwich Slices”. So far I have kept very much to just one book (seen in the left sidebar), with very good success.

In my garden the most bountiful crop, as you will not be surprised to read, has been by far the tomatoes. As the first frost date approaches I will be determined to preserve every last ripe (and green) tomato in the yard so we can enjoy their rich flavour throughout the fall, winter and early spring. The easiest way to do this is to pack them, uncooked, in jars. If you have the Bernardin book that I recommend, the instructions for doing this are entitled “Raw-Packed Tomatoes with No Added Liquid”. I’ll assume you have some basic knowledge of canning. If not, I recommend picking up this book. It contains really great, detailed instructions for canning all kinds of fruits and vegetables, and a lot of recipes, too. I started using it last season and it’s looking pretty weathered already.

Here’s my basic canning set-up. On the back left burner is the huge pot I use as a boiling-water canner. I bought it a few years ago at No Frills for ten bucks. It holds five 1 liter jars or 7 pint jars. Inside is a canning rack that sits on the bottom of the pot. On the back right burner are simmering lids. The front left burner is for boiling water to peel the tomatoes, and the front right burner holds a pot for recipes like salsa that require cooking the tomatoes first. For the raw-packed tomatoes, you won’t need this last pot.

There are more photos after the jump. Hope you’ve got a high speed connection!

Place a bowl of cold water next to the stove.

After preparing your jars and lids, you will need to peel your tomatoes. You need approximately three pounds of raw tomatoes for each 1 liter jar, or a half pound if you’re using pint jars (500 mL).

Before peeling, though, I like to sort my tomatoes by variety so that each jar contains mostly the same kind of tomato. This isn’t by any means absolutely necessary, it’s just my preference. Here I have a bunch of Paul Robeson tomatoes. I’ve removed their stems in preparation for peeling. Beside them is a bowl I use to collect compostable kitchen waste. I throw the tomato peels and cores into the bowl to add to my compost pile out back.

To peel your tomatoes, score an “X” into the bottom of each fruit.

Carefully drop several tomatoes into the boiling water for about 30 seconds, or until you can see the peel beginning to pull away from the fruit.

Using a pair of tongs, move the tomatoes from the boiling water into the bowl of cold water. One by one, remove the peel from your tomatoes (remember to compost!) and cut out the core.

Cut the peeled fruit into halves or quarters and reserve in a separate bowl.

Continue to peel and quarter your tomatoes until you have the desired amount.

Next, you may need to add salt and citric acid or lemon juice to your hot jars. You will need to consult your own recipe, but for the one I use, for 1 L jars, add 2 tbsp of bottled lemon juice (1 tbsp for pint jars) and 1 tsp course salt (1/2 tsp for pint jars).

Pack the tomatoes into the jars until juice fills in the spaces and you have a half an inch headspace (the space between the top of the jar and the food inside).

Pack each jar, one by one, place the lids and screwbands and process in your boiling-water canner for 85 minutes.

After 85 minutes have elapsed, remove the lid from the canner, and allow the jars to sit in the hot water for five minutes before removing.

Label and store. Eat! Remember summer!