Produce Overflow

If you have a garden, you might be feeling a little overwhelmed with produce about now. This is a wonderful problem to have, but it can be a little overwhelming anyway.

Tomatoes, especially, can trickle in agonizingly slowly and consistently, haunting our days. There aren’t always enough to make it worthwhile to drag out the canner and jars, but they still sit there and stare at you until you deal with them. Sometimes I just throw them into bags and freeze them until they add up to a pile, but I get tired of doing that all the time.

I found a new way to use the tomatoes and odd assorted veggies that make their way into my house these days.

Here’s how:

1) Walk through the garden and gather random produce. Today I found tomatoes, onions, green peppers, chili peppers, garlic, basil, parsley, and kale. I could have added a couple of carrots, but I didn’t this time.

2) Wash everything and chop coarsely. Toss with a dash of olive oil in a roasting pan. Put into a 250* oven and forget about it for 4 or 5 hours.

3) Cool and blend. Add a little salt if you want to.

4) Grease muffin tins and fill with purée. Freeze and empty into a gallon freezer bag.

5) On a cold January night, pop one or two cute little discs into your pot of chili soup or pasta and enjoy an extra burst of August flavor.

I love this trick because it takes just a few strokes of a knife blade and creates very few dishes (anyone who is knee deep in canning knows about the tall stacks of dishes that chase us around these days). The slow roasting brings out a wonderful flavor in the tomatoes and onions, and you will end up with a thick, lovely purée without stirring a boiling pot for hours. What’s not to love about easy and delicious?