In Spite Of The Drought

In spite of the drought we have had in St. Louis this year, I was able to produce tons and tons of cherry tomatoes! The large tomatoes were few and far between, but I was able to pick some, and they are still producing.
I don't usually cook with the tomatoes, as we usually just add them to salads and pawn the rest off to friends and family.

This year I decided to do something with the large basket of tomatoes and peppers sitting on my counter getting ready to rot.

The first thing I made was roasted tomato and red pepper soup. It was really really good, and it increased my interest to find other ways to use up this crop (we have tons and tons of tomatoes!).

So, the other day I decided to make my own spaghetti sauce. Now, this may seem boring for most, but my idea of tomato sauce is reaching into the pantry and taking out a jar of red stuff.

First I grabbed a large roasting pot and stuffed tomatoes, onions, peppers, and a few mildly hot peppers. I sprinkled the veggies with rosemary olive oil and basil.

This is after a half hour. I stirred and plopped them back into the oven. I did this 3 times, for a total of 1.5 hours at 450 degrees.

I forgot to take a picture of what I did next, but just close your eyes and try to imagine! I took half the veggies out and froze them for a later recipe. I put the rest in a smaller pot. The reason why I did this is because I used an immersion blender to blend the roasted veggies. If the pot is not deep enough, sauce splatters everywhere. i highly recommend an immersion blender as you can see by the pic, the veggies are now a nice thick sauce without any chunks.

The tomatoes I used were sweet cherry tomatoes, and the sauce came out very sweet tasting. To calm down the sweetness, I added a little cream (who doesn't like cream?) and that did the trick.

 Boiling the noodles. I used a small pot since there are only the two of us. :)

Here is the sauce with some parmesan cheese on top. I know it's a lousy picture, but by the time we sat down to eat, it was dark outside....and I wasn't about to take my plate down to the light box for a photo shoot!

So, there you go.....roasted tomato pepper spaghetti sauce! We had garlic bread and a salad, which made a tasty dinner!