Time to use all those habaneros! Okay, let me warn you, this is a hazardous exercise. I was coughing, my eyes watering, and my nose burning all while using rubber gloves. The combination of the habanero and vinegar fumes is a killer. Thankfully, I have successfully made a few bottles of hot sauce.
This recipe has carrots in it, so the sauce is a little chunkier than I’m used to. We will have to see if I can get it out of the hot sauce bottles without too much trouble.
Tonight I made our first dish using our tomato sauce. It was spaghetti squash and meatballs in the crock pot.
It was very easy to make. Just throw in the sauce, a little oil, balls of Italian sausage, and a spaghetti squash cut in half with the seeds removed. After it cooks for a few hours in the crock pot, you remove the squash and the flesh can be scooped right out. We are pleased with our sauce!
We did it! We used the rest of our tomatoes to make 8 jars of salsa. 4 hot, 4 mild. We’ve had a tiny taste but won’t know for sure until we pick up some chips.
This weekend we thawed out all of the processed tomatoes that we froze over the summer. It ended up being around 20-something jars. Our first project was to make tomato sauce with 7 lbs. of tomatoes. We even had some basil we had frozen from the garden to use as seasoning.
Some of the jars
Cooking down the tomatoes
Final sauce jars
We didn’t use a recipe specifically for canning, so we poured the sauce into old pasta jars and froze them for later. The remaining 10 lbs. of tomatoes will be made into salsa! Good activity for a cold Sunday.
We harvested our first bunch of kale today. Most of the other kale plants aren’t doing very well, especially the ones in pots. I’m making a note to plant more kale and only put them in the raised beds.
I used the kale to make a spicy chicken sausage soup. The kale actually gave it a really nice crunch.
