Hot tomatoes

To me a good weekend is when I get something done. Since my bag has come to a grinding halt, the weather is a little cooler and my tomatoes have finally started to produce more fruit than we can possibly eat, yesterday was labelled 'tomato sauce making day'.

Have you ever had home made tomato sauce? I am not much of a sauce person, but even I cannot resist home made tomato sauce and this recipe that Adrian's mum gave to me is really, really yummy.

Home made tomato sauce

3kg tomatoes

1 apple

5g cayenne pepper (didn't have any so I used some crushed chilli instead)

50g garlic

350ml white vinegar

500g sugar 

1tbs salt

15g cloves

30g fresh ginger

Cook for 4 hours. The spices can be put in a bag and removed after the first three hours of cooking but I usually just put everything in there and it seems to work fine.
I remove the lid the last 30min or so to let it thicken up a little bit. You can strain it if you prefer it really smooth, which is what the original recipe said to do. I just let it cool a bit and put it through the blender then bring it back to the boil and into sterilised bottles. 

EASY

I was wondering if I perhaps needed a bigger pot? Should be ok if I watched it closely, shouldn't it? I only left it for a few minutes (promise) and Disaster!!! There was hot, sticky tomato juice on the stove, all over the bench, down the front of the cupboards onto the floor and even inside the top drawer. It is simply way too embarrassing showing that part! So, a big clean-up and four hours later...

... voila! Taste tested tonight over BBQ lamb chops and it was given the thumbs up.
Now back to the stitching. It is a little late, but if I picked up the needle now, I should be able to finish the background for Queen Bee - now that would make it super productive weekend, wouldn't it?

Hope you have had a lovely, relaxing weekend.
Anna x