Just last week, it was late November, and we were still able to harvest tomatoes and make fresh tomato sauce from our garden! That’s one of the joys of gardening in a mild climate, especially when I see my friends back in Utah covered in snow lately. ;)

Garden cleanup and tomato fatigue

After some near freezes and shorter daylight, I decided to get to work cleaning up the veg garden. I removed (cutting off, not pulling out the roots) the large tomatoes (San Marzano, Early Girl, Beefsteak), and I left the cherry tomatoes (Sungold and Sweet 100), because they tend to continue producing or at least ripening in the cool autumn days. But, this (see below) was the sad state of the neglected tomatoes. I know, I know! As I said on Instagram, “This sad situation shall be known as tomato fatigue. Our May selves would be kicking our butts for this, and our July selves would simply say we’re crazy. But our November selves are like, ‘whatever, I’m tired, dude!'”

Oh, and by the way, I don’t think we’ll grow San Marzanos (similar to Romas) again. We had a lot of green tomatoes from those plants, but not a lot ripened for us, and we live in tomato heaven here in the Sacramento Valley! The Early Girls were our best producers.

Anyway, on to the sauce…

I made fresh tomato sauce once earlier this summer, and it came out too strong — I was so excited about all the herbs we grew this summer, and I used our oregano, thyme, basil, and rosemary. But I overdid the flavors. So this time, I found this recipe and decided to try it, using our basil and oregano, along with some store-bought garlic, onion, and pepper flakes. Oh yeah, I threw in a couple small home-grown orange bell peppers, too. Here’s my actual, adapted recipe:

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 2 teaspoons fresh, chopped oregano
• 3 teaspoons fresh, chopped basil
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 5 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3 pinches of dried red pepper flakes
• 2 small orange bell peppers, chopped
• 5 quarts fresh tomatoes (a mix of large and cherry tomatoes directly from the garden)
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter

In the olive oil, on medium heat in a large pot, cook the onion, garlic, dried pepper flakes, bell peppers, honey, salt, pepper, half the oregano, and half the basil. Stir and fry until the onions are starting to get translucent. Add the tomatoes and crush with a potato masher. Raise the heat to medium high until it starts simmering, then reduce to low or medium-low and let simmer for two hours or so. I think I actually let mine go three hours — I got distracted. Add the butter and the rest of the basil and oregano near the end. Give the sauce a brief spin in a blender (mine was in two batches because of the volume), just enough to blend up pieces of tomato skin and chunks and make a smooth sauce like the second photo below.

We had about 5 quarts of fresh tomatoes, mostly the Sungold and Sweet 100s, with a few Early Girls. It yielded a little less than 2 quarts of sauce in the end. I let it boil down for about three hours, then I threw it in a blender (because I don’t peel the tomatoes, and the skins need to be blended in). It came out quite nice! At first, I thought it was still a little strong tasting, but after refrigerating it and using it a day later, the flavors blended together a bit more, and it was great. It’s possible the cherry tomatoes give it a stronger flavor than larger tomatoes would, and perhaps the ratio of tomato skin to tomato flesh with the little cherries might give it a stronger flavor, but it was quite yummy!