tomato sauce fail

Last night after I put Matteo to bed I attempted to make tomato sauce from scratch.

I know many of you out there probably can do this in your sleep, but for me this was a big adventure. I had a (small) bounty of tomatoes from our garden just ready to be turned into something special and after seeing homemade tomato sauce recipes in yesterday's Food section of the newspaper, as well as on Smitten Kitchen, I was pumped.



Well, first of all, I really didn't have that many tomatoes to work with. See what I mean? That's all I got. And second, the recipe I followed called for a food mill, which I do not have. So I spent a lot of time boiling and peeling and removing seeds. But fine, whatever. I am a Midwest Woman! I grew these damn things myself and now I'm going to feed my family with them!

*sigh*

After all that prep, I don't know what kind of family I'm going to be able to feed with the measly pot of sauce that I ended up with. A family of gnomes, maybe?



To make matters worse, I was feeling so self-assured about my cooking skills after I got to this part that instead of following the recipe to the letter, which I almost always have to do with new things, I went wild and added waaayyy too much red pepper. It's tasty, and has a nice rich garlic and basil flavor, but then as soon as that hits your tongue you immediately start sweating from the red pepper flakes.

Now that I'm finished, I'm not sure what to do with it. Do I serve it over pasta to try to enjoy the flavor, or do I use it for pizza sauce to try to counter the pepper with cheese? Whatever it ends up being, at least I can say that I did it. And, for future reference, if I ever go to all the trouble of making homemade sauce again I'll make sure to get a few more tomatoes to make the process worth my time.