Sauce

I married an Italian grandmother.

We went out to run errands yesterday, and ended up with a half bushel of the last of the local tomatoes. He protested that he had too many other things to do, but I reminded him of how much he would regret it in January if he didn't put up the tomatoes NOW.

We canvassed the house for mason jars, scored some more from his mother, laid in new lids from the hardware store, and he got to work.

It's a simple tomato sauce, he calls it pommarola (the way Bugialli spells it, it's more often spelled pomarola) - tomato, red onion, carrot, celery, parsley and basil - cooked gently for three hours, run through the food mill, cooked again briefly to amalgamate the goodness, and processed in a boiling water bath for 40 minutes. We ended up with fifteen and a half quarts.In mid-winter, it will be so worth it.

The tomatoes were local, the carrots were from our CSA, the parsley and basil came from our garden, and the celery and red onion came from the supermarket (and therefore from who knows where). And hours later, the house still smells divine.