Tomato Sauce!

As winter continues, I've been busy using up what we stored from last summer. We still have some potatoes and garlic plus a bunch of frozen items. This push to clean out the freezer is part of a month-long effort to use up what we have stored in the pantry and see just how much we can whittle down our January grocery bill.

There were two bags of tomatoes that I froze in October, mostly because we were sick of eating them and I was too tired from processing to do anything useful with them. I let them thaw overnight and then ran them through this food mill to remove the skins and seeds.

That gave me about a gallon of tomatoes that I cooked down into sauce. Some other stored items I was able to use included some garlic, some dried red pepper flakes, and a bunch of oregano. We had already used up our basil from last summer so I dug out some commercial basil from the cupboard.

Overall, this turned out pretty tasty and will form the basis of two meals this week. I think my next tasks include dealing with grapes I froze and also some semi-sweet cherries. The grapes are probably destined for a small batch of jelly. I suspect the cherries could be used to make filling for tarts or turnovers.