Tomato Sauce

Some years I have the tomato plant that never blooms. Other years I have the tomato plant that won't stop giving.

This year I had a cherry tomato plant whose sprouted with the intent of burying me in sweet, red cherry tomatoes. A wonderful gift, but there is a limit to how many cherry tomatoes I can get my family, neighbors, and random stranger I attack with bags of fruit to eat. Yes, tomatoes are a fruit. Savory, but still fruit.

And, yes, my neighbors did start hiding when they saw me approaching with bags full of tomatoes.

Normally I'd freeze them and forget until I needed to make a sauce of some kind, which can take years. But not this year! Waiting for the "right time" to eat the tomatoes is not a luxury I have with the move looming over my head. So I decided to try canning the tomatoes.

Which meant I tweeted about the tomatoes.

Which means I now owe all of you a tomato sauce recipe and a mass email seems complicated. This way is easier.

LAZY LIANA'S TOMATO SAUCE RECIPE

- one crock pot full of tomatoes (washed but nothing else matters)
- 1/4 water if your crock pot tends to overheat and burn
- 1/4 sugar (maybe)
- 2 tbsp salt
- lemon juice or citric acid for canning (only if you are canning)
- jars, lids, or other containers

1. Take the clean tomatoes and dump them in the slow cooker.
2. Turn the slow cooker on high and put the lid on. Leave for eight hours or so.
3. Mash any of the tomatoes that haven't burst.
4. Turn the slow cooker to low and leave overnight.
5. Take the lid off and watch for a few more hours. Skim the tomato skins if you like.
6. Cool the tomatoes so they aren't molten lava and puree in a blender or food processor (You could use a food grinder and filter out the seeds and skins if you want to be fancy. I don't have one, so I didn't.)
7. Put the tomato sauce back in the slow cooker on low with the lid off.
8. Taste. Add salt. Add sugar if needed. A little goes a long way so don't overdue it.
9. Continue cooking until the sauce reaches desired consistency (probably very soon).

From here you could put the sauce to good use as the base for chili, spaghetti, salsa, or pizza sauce. You could freeze it. Or you could put it in a jar and into the fridge for a week or so.

If you want to can the sauce you need sterile canning jars, sterile lids, a boiling water bath (literally a giant pot of boiling water - it's easier than cooking noodles), and lemon juice. The Ball canning recipe says 1 tbsp lemon juice per pint and 2 tbsp per quart.  Adjust depending on the size of your jars. Then boil for 35-40 minutes (the larger jars stay in longer) and let them cool on the counter overnight.


How simple is this? If you have a spare corner in your kitchen and a blender this is a recipe you can do in your sleep. Actually work time is less than ten minutes if you freeze the sauce.

Sourdough Soft Pretzel Recipe

I was talking about these on Twitter and decided to type up my recipe. It's posted over on my food blog (with Twin o'Mine Amy Laurens) Heart of the Home. Like everything else I do the recipe is cobbled together from various sources, and then warped by my own quirks until I have something I like.

It's funny, I write the exact same way. I take a bunch of random ideas, spin then around, and write a book I love. Enjoy the recipe! Pretzels are great editing good. Especially with spicy cheese for dipping.

- Liana

Ghost of An Author

As much as an author tries to remove themself from a book, to give the characters their own identity, there are always ghostly traces of the original imagination in a book.

In some books it's obvious: a sense of style, a love of cats, an interest in Norse mythology.

In some books the traces are barely noticeable: a favorite color, a preferred perfume, the city where the author's heart was first broken.

For me I've noticed a trend to mention food. If you follow me on Twitter you know that regular food updates are the norm. Not because I'm dieting (it starts with the word DIE - I'm just not interested), but because a good portion of my day revolves around food.

One of my favorite authors write COOK BOOKS for goodness sake!

For me, food is intertwined with life. Everyone needs food. Everyone has memories tied to food. More than color or music, food speaks to us. Eating is the universal language, and everyone speaks it in their own way.

Is it any surprise that food sneaks into my books?

One of my characters cooks when she's angry. Another character is starving. In some books the food is part of the culture, how they eat is part of what makes the world unique. Food is always in the background. Always important.

What's it for you? What always sneaks into your books?

Inspiration....

...or possibly just pregnancy cravings. It's hard to say.

Have you ever read a book and gone, "Mmmm, that sounds yummy!" I was reading Lisa Shearin's Magic Lost Trouble Found and found myself drooling over the idea for the dough knots in sugar the mysterious character Maria makes. Not only does the character sound like she has some history, but she sounds like the kind of woman I want to be friends with.

And since I actually can boil water I decided to give Maria's tasty treats a try.

Maria's Knots
- one can of Pilsbury breadsticks unbaked (yes, this is cheating. If you have time to make dough more power to you)
- enough vegetable oil to fill the bottom 2 inches of a medium sized pot (3-4 cups)
- sugar or a sugar/cinnamon mix to roll the dough in
- 1tbspn olive oil

You'll also need one cookie sheet with foil or parchment paper for the uncooked knots and one plate or cookie sheet with paper towels to let the knots cool on.

1- Grease the foil and your hands with the olive oil. A dab will do ya, so don't overdue this. You just don't want the dough sticking.

2- Heat the oil in the pot over medium-low heat. This will take some time but you don't want the oil too hot or the knots won't cook properly.

3- Open the package of breadsticks while the oil heats, unroll, and take each potential breadstick and knot it. Loose knots cook better. Beauty is not an issue.

4- When oil is hot enough to make a drop of water pop without exploding (very scientific, I know) drop the first knot in. IT should fizz and puff but not spit and turn instantly brown. If the dough sinks, the oil isn't warm enough. If the dough crisps in under 30 seconds the oil is too hot.

5- Brown one side of the knot and flip over (30-60 seconds per side). You can fit 2-3 knots in the pot at a time depending on pot size. Looser knots will cook in ropes rather than becoming a lump of dough with a gooey center.

6- Drain the cooked knots on the papertowels until they are cool enough to touch but not cold. About 5 minutes.

7- Roll the knots in sugar and eat hot.

Enjoy your weekend!

A favorite recipe... redone

Since I'm always harping on balance and how important it is to do something besides write I'm leaving a posting for this weekend. Sunday's are my No Writing day. I take the time to spend with family, read a book, go to church, and take a long Sunday afternoon nap. But Sunday dinner is a tradition in my home. Everyone loves to cook, but being big a pregnant I prefer to simplify my meals.

Baked Chicken with Tomato and Basil
- enough chicken for everyone eating (2-3 breasts for my clan of 4)
- fresh basil (about 8 large leaves)
- 1/4 onion diced or 6 pearl onions halved
- 2 medium tomatoes sliced or a few handfuls of cherry tomatoes (And by now you understand why my husband can't copy any of my recipes. I'm an intuitive cook, not a scholar. I eyeball amounts and fiddle with recipes to no end. Really, it tastes good!)
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 tbspn olive oil
- 1/4 cup chicken broth or water


Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Celsius
- Dice onion, cut tomato, shred basil, and crush garlic (I like a big rubber mallet for this. Lay the garlic somewhere solid, smash with the mallet, and remove peel. All done! It takes all of ten seconds and the kids are always happy to help with the smashing.)
- Put chicken in glass casserole dish or whatever you use for baking things like this
- Drop in the remaining ingredients
- Drizzle olive oil over everything
- Add some salt and pepper to the chicken if you like and then the chicken broth
- Cover the casserole dish with foil and tuck tightly (you want to catch the steam)
- Bake for 45-60 minutes or until juices run clear when chicken is cut
- Remove chicken from pan and place in broiler on high for 3-5 minutes until it turns brown and crisp
- Eat... there will be some yummy pan juices that you can either use to make rice in or sop up with some fresh bread



This is the pre-oven dish. By the time it was cooked I was too hungry for pictures. It looked delicious and tasted better. :0) You'll just have to take my word on this.

Standing Time: Less than 10 minutes
Total Cook Time: 75 minutes max
Can you make it ahead? Probably, I've never tried but I don't see any reason you couldn't toss this together and refrigerate overnight as long as it's covered. I don't think this is a good candidate for freezing.

... tried it and...

The Brussels sprouts went over well. Everyone ate the ones they were given without gagging or dying. I thought they were tasty. DH said they still aren't his favorite, but they weren't bad. I think that's the best I can get from him. :o)

Cookie Time!

Thanksgiving is only a few days away so I need to start baking now. I have a huge tin we'll stuff with every kind of cookie you can name: chocolate chip, cream cheese sugar cookie, lavender cookies, jello cookies... some crispy some chewy, some chocolate and gooey!

Tonight, because I'm craving something elegant, lavender cookies!

Did you know you could even cook with lavender? You can. It tastes like it smells. Very ladylike, old world, charming, and perfect for munching with chamomiles tea, although you probably need to nibble, not munch, because lavender is so refined.

5/8 cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
--> cream together

2 eggs
2 tbspn dried lavender flowers
--> mix into the cream

1.5 cups flour
--> stir in slowly

You can also add vanilla or use vanilla sugar (sugar that has vanilla pods sitting in it for a week or so, you can do this with the lavender too).

Roll, cut into shapes, bake at 350 until golden (10-12 minutes if memory serves).

While I'm baking, what are your favorite cookies?

Saturday Something Else

Enough teasing, I'll give you the recipe that worked....

You will need:
4 ounces of chocolate, preferably dark (I liked the 53% dark)
1/3 cup of eggnog
1 tsp cocoa powder
powder sugar (confectioners sugar) for rolling

- Cut the chocolate very small.
- Bring the eggnog to a simmer and pour over chocolate
- Wait 30 seconds
- Stir chocolate and eggnog
- Add cocoa to thicken
- Refrigerate for 30-45 minutes
- Pull out, scoop chocolate with teaspoon and roll into balls and then in powdered sugar to coat
- Chill and serve

Hint: Having some powdered sugar on your hands helps.


I really liked these. They were tasty. But they didn't withstand the heat well. They got melty... I'm not sure what the fix for that us. I think I want to try rolling into balls, freezing, and coating with some candy coating or white chocolate.

I'll let you know how that goes :o)