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Posted on September 22, 2019by Anne-Marie Bonneau

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How to make easy tomato purée with fresh tomatoes

How to make easy tomato purée with fresh tomatoes! 🍅

On the weekend, I bought two, 20-pound cases of dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes. After prepping my seventh baking sheet of tomato wedges to roast, while deciding between prepping and sleeping, I chopped up a few pounds of tomatoes, threw them into the slow cooker and chose sleep. In the morning, I ran them through my food mill, reduced the ensuing purée over low heat, stored it in a jar and froze it. So easy! I’m definitely adding purée making to my yearly ritual. In the fall or winter, I’ll transform this staple into pasta sauce or pizza sauce or tomato paste or add it to chana masala or minestrone soup or any other recipe calling for fresh tomatoes.

If you don’t have a food mill, you can blanch and peel the tomatoes. If you don’t mind skins, leave them on. You’ll need to purée the tomatoes after cooking them. In lieu of a food mill, use a blender, immersion blender or food processor. You can store the purée at this point or cook it down. The slow cooker isn’t great for reducing liquid—it can’t escape—but I did one batch that way. A pot is much quicker.

When we broke up with plastic, I had to figure out how to replace canned tomatoes—cans are lined with plastic (the stuff is everywhere!) and although many food manufacturers plaster the claim “Now BPA-Free!” on their packages, the can linings may contain something similar and just as bad. I don’t know if I would have started processing so many tomatoes had I not broken up with plastic. As a result, the tomatoes I eat now taste incredible!

I go through this ritual every fall after the price of tomatoes drops. I pay almost half for tomatoes as I do at the start of the season. But as I chop the 150th tomato, I ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” Then in winter, after thawing out a jar to make a fabulous tomato sauce or other tomato-based dish, with that first taste comes my answer.

The full directions for tomato purée are on my blog.

My daughter MK and I made one last batch of fermen

My daughter MK and I made one last batch of fermented salsa. (Actually, MK made it, I recorded...) This stuff tastes great pre-ferment but after... OMG. It has a tangy, intensely tomato flavor with a slight effervescence. Several years ago, a reader told me it makes her husband’s eyes roll up into the back of his head when he eats it—quite the testimonial!

Chop up tomatoes, onion, bell pepper, jalapeño, garlic, cilantro. I use a my hands to crush the tomato pieces. You can also prep this in a food processor but omit the onions—the blades can make them bitter. Stir in salt and lime or lemon juice to taste. (We use lemon juice because we have a lemon tree.) Pack into clean jars, leave an inch or more headspace to prevent the salsa from gurgling out of the jar when it ferments and close the jar. This is essentially liquidy so I don’t weigh it down—it’s hard to weigh down soupy ingredients. Let it sit at room temperature until it bubbles and the color becomes more muted—both signs of successfuly fermentation. Stir it daily when you check on it and taste it. It ferments in about 2 to 3 days. Move it to the fridge when it’s done.

We didn’t add a starter to this batch—it ferments on its own—but you could add one if you like. This recipe is highly adaptable!

🐝 I bee so happy! 🐝 This July, we drilled

🐝 I bee so happy! 🐝

This July, we drilled holes into the dead stump we left standing with the intention of turning it into a snag—a bee shelter. Today I noticed that about five tunnels are occupied! Leaf litter plugging up a hole signifies that someone has taken up residence (hopefully native bee larvae). The holes face east and southeast—out of direct afternoon sun, which would be too hot. We drilled two different sizes. So far, the bees prefer the smaller, 1/4-inch holes. The holes are about 4 inches deep (as far as we could get with our drill bit).

After reading Nature’s Best Hope by Doug Tallamy @homegrownnationalpark, I started planting native plants to provide habitat for insects, including bees. This bee shelter is part of that process.

Fall is the time to get back into planting natives. If you have no yard but do have a balcony, you can make a difference to bees and butterflies by planting a few natives in pots—they will find them!

Stay tuned for updates on our snag’s residents.

For breakfast, my daughter MK loves to eat khichdi

For breakfast, my daughter MK loves to eat khichdi (aka khichuri, kitchri, kidgeree, kitchari…), an ancient Indian comfort dish enjoyed worldwide. We sometimes have it for lunch or dinner as well.

When we broke up with plastic in 2011, we dumped breakfast cereal first. Not only does every box on the shelf house an inner plastic bag, the cereal itself, while not plastic, has been processed to such a degree as to hardly be recognizable as food. It consists of cheap grain, which manufacturers have morphed into sugary, child-appealing shapes with some nutrients added back in order to compensate for what processing stripped out—and all at huge profit margins.

Although the list of ingredients may look long, khichdi calls predominantly for dry ingredients (moong dal, rice, spices) that you merely measure (versus chopping piles of food). Once combined, stir occasionally during cooking. A few minutes of hands-on work and 30 minutes of simmering produces a filling dish that keeps in the refrigerator for about a week—simply reheat when hungry for a quick, tasty, convenient meal.

The adaptable ingredients:

1 cup moong dal (split yellow mung beans)
½ cup basmati rice
1 tablespoon ghee or, if vegan, coconut oil
1 tablespoon minced ginger
4 cardamom pods
2 teaspoons black mustard seed
1 teaspoon cumin seed
1 teaspoon fennel seed
1 teaspoon fenugreek seed
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon ground coriander
3 bay leaves
8 cups water
2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
2 tablespoons lime juice, about 1 lime (optional)
½ cup cilantro for garnish (optional)

See my website for the full recipe. Enjoy!

If you read the news at all, scroll through your f

If you read the news at all, scroll through your feed or live in an area affected by climate change (i.e., the planet), you may feel anxious about the state of our home and the future of all of its inhabitants. The strategies I've outlined here can help.
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#heatwaves #heatwave2022 #heatwave #drought #californiadrought #californiafires #wildfire #waterconservation #conserve #conservewater #noplanetb #thereisnoplanetb #lowwaste #zerowaste #zerowastekitchen #zerowastetips #climatecrisis #climateemergency #extinctioncrisis #climatechangeisreal #globalwarmingisreal #climatejustice #climateaction #climateactionnow #actonclimate #earthdayeveryday #loveyourmother #dontlookup

By no means must you grind your own flour in order

By no means must you grind your own flour in order to reduce waste!

But if you do want to try it... home-milled flour tastes delicious and is so much fun to crank out!

Although I have a small hand-cranked mill that works quite well, I had yearned for an electric mill for years but kept putting it off—so expensive, I didn’t want to buy new, which model was best… Then one day, my neighbor Sita showed up on my doorstep with her beautiful vintage electric mill to give to me. She had ground flour to bake bread when her kids were growing up but now they have their own kids and she had stopped eating bread.

Here, I've ground up chana dal (split chickpeas). It's not quite besan (very fine flour ground from split roasted chickpeas). If I sift it through an extremely fine sieve, it should be as fine as besan. So now I don't need to buy chickpea flour, which is great stuff to have on hand. (I'm obsessed with besan chilla and chickpea crepes.)

Grinding my own flour takes only a few minutes, reduces packaging waste and saves money—hand-milled flour usually costs less. I also buy only one item at the store—chana dal—and cook with two versions of it.

Would you buy secondhand sheets and towels? When

Would you buy secondhand sheets and towels?

When I mentioned to someone that I do and he said "Eww," I asked him if he had ever stayed in a hotel.

The ick factor creates loads of waste. We don’t want to get our hands dirty and marketing campaigns have convinced us—especially women—that we must buy many disposable, expensive products to deal with our “filthy” bodies and anything that comes out of them.

Add to this the fact that when we buy clothing or household goods, many of us want them “clean” and packaged, as though no one at the factory who made, packaged or shipped them ever actually touched them.

If we can get over the ick factor and change our perspective, we can reduce our consumption of many unnecessary products, reduce our waste and save money.
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#frugal #thriftlife #thrifter #thriftedfinds #thriftfind #thriftstores #reuserevolution #choosetoreuse #secondhandfirst #secondhandfinds #secondhandstuff #makedo #buyless #selfreliance #selfreliant #sustainablelifestyle #simpleliving #wastefreeliving #slowlivingmovement #artofslowliving #breakfreefromplastic #plasticpollutes #microplastics #zerowastejourney #zerowastelifestyle #zerowastetips #zerowastechef #thereisnoplanetb

Most of the sunflowers I planted in the spring are

Most of the sunflowers I planted in the spring are ready for harvesting the seeds. The seeds are fairy loose and come out easily (kind of like loose teeth!). Each one had a little flower attached to it that brushes away.

I'll let the seeds dry inside spread in a single layer and then store them in glass jars. If you store seeds in glass and see any condensation, remove them and dry them out further.

I'll save these seeds to share, eat and plant next year. The birds can help themselves to the seeds in the sunflowers I haven't cut back.

I didn't add any music to this Reel because I love the sounds of harvesting seeds 😍

Save this Reel if you learned something!

Are you grocery shopping today? If you store your

Are you grocery shopping today? If you store your reusable produce bags in your shopping bags, you'll always have them with you. This one trick with slash the amount of plastic that makes its way into your home.

You can buy produce bags or make them. I make very simple bags—rectangles folded like a book, sewn across the bottom and up the side with a finished top. Most of my bags are made of old sheets and fabric scraps. The pattern is on my website—look under the Reusa-Bags tab.

Share this post with a friend to remind them to take their produce bags to the store or farmers' market today!

Both my kids are home and cooking basically non-st

Both my kids are home and cooking basically non-stop! This is why you teach your kids to cook—so you can one day sit back, relax and eat. (Well, also teach them so they can feed themselves and not rely on corporations to provide their every need.) I actually didn't so much teach them as let them help in the kitchen. Also, when I kicked plastic, Charlotte was only 10 and knew if she wanted cookies, she'd have to make cookies. That was great motivation.

Charlotte made wonderful pillowy gnocchi for a dinner party she threw for her friends this week.

Almost all gnocchi comes in plastic packaging, often quite thick. But very good gnocchi is very simple to make—you need only potatoes, flour and salt.

You can top gnocchi with various foods, ensuring what you have on hand gets eaten. Pesto made with various greens is a quick, easy and food-waste-reducing topping that clings to the little gnocchi grooves you can make with the back of a fork if you don't have a gnocchi board like Charlotte uses in the video.

The portrait pie in the last photo was a group effort by Charlotte and her friends Jayde and Anna of their friend Neil 😀🥧

Go to my website for the new recipe.

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