I have In My Kitchen this month an almost empty tomato box. It occurred to me that we are fast coming to the end of the tomato season and I had yet to restock a few staples that I rely on through the year. So it was now or never.
First up, tomato ketchup. I normally make this in huge batches that will last the year, but we came to the end of our stash a few months ago. This ketchup is quite different from the ubiquitous thick, gluggy stuff sold commercially, and is a firm favourite of The Princess.
I had also run out of slow roasted tomatoes, so a large tray of these have now gone into the freezer. The Princess blends a bag of these tomatoes with a block of cream cheese to make a tasty dip, which also doubles as a sandwich spread.
Tomato relish is a staple in my cupboard. It finds its way into ham sandwiches, is great served with zucchini fritters and makes a quick pizza sauce for mini scone pizzas. It also makes a great dip when mixed with cream cheese. I use an old family recipe, that is also a closely guarded secret so I cannot share. Sorry.
I was down to four jars of whole tomatoes so I used the remainder of the box to fill a few extra jars. Then it occurred to me that I had no tomato powder left, so now I might need to buy more tomatoes.
We also had our annual passata day last weekend. This year we turned 320kg of tomatoes into sauce, but we made the effort to drain off more liquid and so ended up with a similar number of bottles to last year. I am not complaining though, as I have 32 bottles of the most gloriously thick passata now tucked into my pantry for the rest of the year.
My iPad is also sitting in the kitchen at the moment, loaded up with my new favourite books: Fix, Freeze, Feast: Meals for a Busy Family and Not Your Mother's Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook. I have been considering The Princess's after-school schedule for next term, and am beginning to become quite worried about how I am going to fit dinner in amongst chauffeuring duties.
Freezer cooking is a term I have long been aware of but as many of the recipes I had seen differed greatly from my own cooking style I didn't really pursue it further. Occasionally I have doubled a recipe to have a meal in the freezer for busy days. Both of these books have now given me some great ideas about how I can adapt my own recipes for freezing, and I have started to stock the freezer for the coming months.
That is it for my kitchen this month. Make sure you pop over to Celia's at Fig Jam & Lime Cordial to see what is happening in other kitchen's around the world.