Friday, I just over plan, do you?

     What is wrong with me?  I must think I am super woman or something.  As in I was going to clean the whole house, do the ironing, get the sewing done that needed to go out today, pick all the garden produce, make spag sauce to freeze, and make blackberry pies and extra pie crusts.  Easy right?


     Here is where you either quit reading or you start to laugh, shake your head or just refuse to look at this blog any more.  Maybe I forgot that I run a business and I would have interruptions.  Or I forgot how much time it takes to do any of the above items on my list.  Or maybe I could morph time and make it longer.  Maybe I forgot that eventually my feet would give out and I would have to sit down and rest.  Okay smacking myself right now....

     Such well laid plans.  Here is what did happen.  I did get the laundry sorted and the ironing dumped on top of the already full basket.  I did get the travel bags unpacked and put away.  I did get two loads of laundry put away.  I did deep clean the family room.  I did spray and hose down three area rugs for cleaning to hang on the deck to dry.  I did water all the flowers and discover that our outdoor back hose will not turn off all the way.  (plumber bill in future) Put hose in garden so it can leak where it is needed.  Oh it also ruined a very expensive hose which now looks like a fat boa constrictor. I picked 1/2 a bushel of tomatoes of all varieties.  All the while being interrupted by customers.

     Now it is noon and I start to wash and cut tomatoes.  I pull 4- 1.5 pound bags of frozen burger out of freezer to thaw. The garden produce took forever.  I ended up with a huge canning kettle full of chopped tomatoes.  I also pulled out all three kinds of cherry maters for a cucumber/tomatoe salad.

Here is my requested large batch tomato/meat spag sauce using fresh tomatoes.

Roughly 5lbs burger or mixture burger /sausage cooked, drained set aside

Fry three large onions and one whole clove of garlic in olive oil until translucent, add to burger

4 cans of tomato paste browned in pan used to cook burger and onions, (this adds flavor) add water as you are browning.  I add about 2 cups of water for every can of paste.  But just add enough in pan to keep paste from burning.  Add to meat mixture.

Now take at least  4 quarts of diced garden tomatoes, (I mix mine and I keep the skins on, this adds roughage)  and all the extra water from paste.

Put all this in a large, large pot on stove and stir.

Now add 2 T sugar
               2 T salt (you can add more as you go)  remember your Tomatoes were not salted
               1 T fennel
               1 T pepper
               2 T oregano  (I use fresh spics from garden)
               2 T parsley  or fresh chopped 1/4 cup
               1 T Basil   or fresh chopped
               4T corn starch
Mix all this together and then add
                1 can of chicken broth  make a slurry  with as few lumps as possible and add to sauce

This will help thicken as it cooks down.  Those little packages of spag sauce mix are mostly corn starch.

Now I take 4 or 5 fresh green peppers and put them whole in the sauce.  I just let them cook along with sauce as it simmers for a couple of hours and cooks down, then I remove whole pepper and throw out.  Peppers give flavor but can over power and bitter a sauce.

Enjoy!  This enough to feed a large crowd or freeze  6 large meals of sauce.  Which is 12 meals for us.

     I also chopped up all the squash and fried it with the onions to add to my sauce.  Vegetable meat sauce.  Delish

So there you have it,

In the mean time while sauce cooks down I froze 8 more quarts of raw tomato.  Then I cleaned the disaster kitchen, so I could get out mixer and mix up 8 pie crusts.  I had picked one gallon of blackberries at Hub's mom and I made two large blackberry pies and froze the other 4 crusts.

I now had a blackberry mess and while the pies cooked I threw, 7.5 cups of flour 1 T salt into the mixer, bloomed 4.5 t of yeast with 2t sugar and 4 T of shortening in hot water.  Add to mixer and beat for 10 minutes on low.  Raise, punch down make two large loaves of french bread, let rise again bake 35-40 minutes at 375.  Clean kitchen again.

So pies are cooking, bread is raising, kitchen is clean and I am soaking wet and exhausted.  No sewing is done.  I ate watched some TV to rest and then I made straps and attached them to 8 bridesmaid dresses and steamed all of them.  I also cut and got a hem ready on a wedding dress that was 13 yards around with 8, yes 8  * *&^% layers.  (I counted them)  I went to bed. 

Have a great and productive day staying positive while you are in the negative.