Feeling saucy?

I am.  Maybe because it's the first week of school. Or maybe because of all of these tomatoes!

Late summer in Dad's garden means my parents can barely keep up with the tomatoes. Which means we end up with a lot of very ripe tomatoes.  Don't throw them away!  Make sauce.

My roommate already told me I was crazy to make sauce from scratch after the first day of school.  But I promise, it's not that bad.  Here's how:

Wash up all of those beauties and put them in a big pot of water. 

You're going to turn on the heat, and magically, the skins will start to peel off all by themselves!  The water won't even have come to a boil yet... it only takes about 10 minutes.

Take them out with tongs.  They'll be really soft and ugly.

I mean, that's pretty ugly.

Let those hot mamas cool!

Then you can peel them.

It's an ugly job, but somebody's got to do it.

Now let this hang out in the fridge for a while...

The Next Day:

After a long day of meetings and broken photocopiers, take out some of that aggression on a few cloves of garlic:

Saute it in some olive oil.  For the love of God, DO NOT BURN THE GARLIC.  Burnt garlic is a tragedy, both for the wasted garlic, and the ruined meal.

I used about three cloves of Dad's garlic... which is strong.  I'll definitely still smell like garlic for the rest of the week.  But it's OK, because it's delicious, and maybe it will keep the freshmen away...

Add the tomatoes in with a fork, because you don't want the tomato water that has since drained out of them:

Above: Squishy tomatoes.  Below: Tomato water.

Yuck, just dump this out.  Nobody wants runny sauce.

In just a few minutes, it will start to look like sauce.  Your kitchen probably already smells delicious.  Let it simmer there in it's tomatoey goodness while you put on the pasta water.

When the pasta is in, and the sauce looks like sauce (15 mins), just add some fresh basil.

Those who have had my sauce before know I usually add a bunch of other things to it, but when the ingredients are this fresh, less is more.  I didn't even add salt or pepper.  Don't overpower the beautiful tomatoes with seasoning-- they don't need it.

Use with your favorite pasta.  I used it over raviolis that just needed to be eaten.

I know you want some of that.  Here, try it-- open wide!

Good, huh?

And I really did just eat all that...  :)