love-apple sauce, and real applesauce

YOU SAY APPLE, AND I SAY TOMATO. Welcome to Food Fest Week 9, where the subject is apples…real ones over at the Dinner Tonight blog, or in my case Love Apples, which is what tomatoes were still called in Victorian times. Though actual apples were scheduled as this week’s topic, I’ve still got the last batches of red sauce to finish before I get to the even-sweeter pink stuff. But come to think of it, both tomato sauce and applesauce are made by the same basic method in my kitchen: skins on. So let’s make some sauce, shall we? No peeling required.Love Apple Sauce (Lazy Woman’s Tomato Sauce)

I make about eight batches of red sauce late summer until frost, stashing it in the freezer for a year of enjoyment. It isn’t much prep work, at least not the way I cook. Each “batch” constitutes a spaghetti potful of fresh, raw ingredients before it cooks down to less than half that, enough for 5 or 6 freezer containers of 12-16 ounces each. If you’ve got that last glut of tomatoes in need of processing, or see a bargain bushel of seconds at the farmstand, this lazy-person’s recipe for red sauce might be just the thing.

Again, I don’t take the time to peel or seed the tomatoes (to you purists, mea culpa; I’m a whole-food type…and also a bit manic when I cook). The sauce is the tiniest bit more bitter, perhaps, but think of all that fiber (and time saved).

Lazy Woman’s Tomato Sauce

Ingredients Enough paste-type or other tomatoes to fill a spaghetti pot 1 head garlic Extra virgin olive oil Fresh basil Fresh parsley, preferably Italian flat-leaf Salt and pepper to taste; small amount of sugar optional

Wash tomatoes and cut off stem ends and any blemishes. Cut them up roughly into large chunks or wedges equal to approximately half a standard

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