In which we get our kitchen back

We celebrated the return of the kitchen with a night of preparing not only minestrone (see previous post), but also more tomato sauce, and slow roasted tomatoes.



We know we will appreciate the effort when we thaw the sauce or the leftover soup this winter (and we're already enjoying the slow-roasted tomatoes). Plus, we were loathe to let one of the last harvests we'll see this year go to waste:



I've posted several pictures of the *before* of E preparing his mother's slow-roasted tomatoes recipe, because it's so pretty. But, I haven't yet posted pictures of the (almost) final product. It ain't pretty, but damn is it tasty. We're supposed to toss them with pastas, use them as garnish, etc. but often we just eat them as snacks before they can make it into a proper meal:



As for the tomato sauce, my European friend, V, emailed to let me know that the Italians she knows always put a tablespoon of sugar in their sauce. And since our first attempt was too acidic, I thought it might be a good thing to try:



We now have 3 different batches of tomato sauce in the freezer. We shall not want for fresh tomato flavor this winter!