Sustainable Eats

Have you ever seen Willi’s gardening blog?

It’s a great local blog with some terrific recipes for eating local produce. I was perusing one night since my friend Justine wrote a post on her prolific honey bees which are in next year’s plans for me. I scanned the recipes and the Red Gravy one caught my eye, or more technically speaking, caught my stomach.

With a crazy bounty crop of saucing tomatoes this year I was on the hunt for a good tomato sauce recipe. I tried out the one for DiAgostino’s Red Gravy over the weekend and it was amazing. I did make a few adjustments to it (doesn’t every cook?) and everyone swooned when they tasted it.

The tomatoes are so fresh, the flavor is so pure, that it’s like eating a sun-kissed tomato fresh from the garden, even after 2 hours of simmering. I used it to sauce some fettucine noodles from Azure Standard’s organic Oregon-grown durham wheat then topped it with fresh chiffonade of basil and grated parmeson from Rubiano in California. It was crazy good.

Here is the link for the recipe for DiAngostino’s Red Gravy.If you can’t get that link to work click on “recipes” then “main dishes” and it’s in the top right hand corner. I’m not sure why that link isn’t working.

The only changes I made, knowing we would eat it fresh rather then can it, was the addition of one finely chopped carrot for sweetness. I won’t make that change next time since I’ll be making several gallons of it to can and I don’t want to change what I know to be a safe canning recipe.

I’m pretty adventuresome where food is concerned but botulism is not your friend under any guise.

Now that I’ve broken down and started purchasing dried pasta I have another quick option to get dinner on the table – in the form of spaghetti sauce with noodles. Because this tomato sauce is so simple you could also use it to make a quick tomato soup or add it to any recipe that calls for tomato sauce. If you want to spice it up you can easily do that by adding more dried herbs or other vegetables then simmering for 30 minutes just before you serve it.

Just don’t change the original recipe if you plan to can it using a water bath process. And when water bath processing tomatoes, you should always use heirloom varieties. The new hybrids may not contain enough acidity to give you the correct pH to stave off botulism. You should always purchase heirloom varieties anyway, grown sustainably by someone who cares.