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Ontario, Canada
I am a wife, mother and grandma who enjoys the many aspects of homemaking. A variety of interests and hobbies combined with travel keep me active. They reflect the importance of family, friends, home and good food.
Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.
--Bobby Flay

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  • [March 19, 2020] - Effective Mar 17, this blog will no longer accept advertising. The reason is very simple. If I like a product, I will promote it without compensation. If I don't like a product, I will have no problem saying so.
  • [March 17, 2020] - A return to blogging! Stay tuned for new tips, resources and all things food related.
  • [February 1, 2016] - An interesting report on why you should always choose organic tea verses non-organic: Toxic Tea (pdf format)
  • Sticky Post - Warning: 4ever Recap reusable canning lids. The reports are growing daily of these lids losing their seal during storage. Some have lost their entire season's worth of canning to these seal failures! [Update: 4ever Recap appears to be out of business.]

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Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Spaghetti Sauce

By far our favourite spaghetti sauce is my home made meat sauce but next to that is roasted tomato sauce.  The last couple of years I have been canning a plainer tomato sauce that captures some of the flavours of the meat sauce but without the meat.  Seasoned with my organically, home grown herbs it has a lovely flavour and smooth texture.  It is a versatile, mildly flavoured sauce that can be used for pasta, cabbage rolls or in any dish where you would use a tomato based pasta sauce.

KitchenAid food strainer
A food strainer is a must when canning the amount of tomatoes I do.  It makes quick work of removing seeds and skins leaving a nice smooth puree to work with.  Foods can be strained before or after cooking.  In most cases I strain tomatoes before making them into sauces although there are a couple f tomato products I strain after cooking.

I have a manual food strainer that I set up indoors or outside depending on the weather.  Last year I splurged on the KitchenAid® food strainer attachment.  The manual food strainer is more work but it is quite portable so I can set it up where I want.  The KitchenAid® food strainer attachment is a lot less work and it gives a smoother product.  The only real complaint that I have is the hopper is too small but there is an additional tray available that extends the hopper to hold more food.  The second problem with the KitchenAid® food strainer is the set-up.  Being short I have to stand on a stool to reach the hopper but that isn't KitchenAid®'s fault that is my parents for not giving me genes for a higher stature.

spaghetti sauce
I used a full hamper (5/8 bushel) to make this spaghetti sauce.  The tomatoes really would have been a bit of a pain to peel although they were a nice size for canning whole tomatoes.  Running the first hamper through the food mill was an easy start to the tomato canning season.

I canned the sauce rather late in the evening while entertaining.  Well actually my husband was entertaining and I just did the food while canning.  I had strained the tomatoes the day before so all I had to do was put the sauce together and cook it.  I do think it looks gorgeous in the jars but then I'm a bit biased.  When making this tomato sauce reserve the skins and seeds for tomato powder and let drain to can up the excess liquid to make tomato stock


3 food lovers commented:

LindaG said...

My parents gave the tall jeans to my brothers. ;)
Your sauce looks really good. I'd buy it. :)
My grandmother had a hand strainer that I used to help her make applesauce with. :)

Garden Gnome said...

Thanks Linda :) A food strainer quite handy in the kitchen even if you don't can foods.

cassandrasmom said...

I had no idea Kitchen Aide made a food strainer! Thank you for letting me know.