Monthly Archives: October 2020

How to Dry Herbs

Miscellaneous

Hi all! Hope you’re doing well and staying warm in the suddenly freezing weather! Unless you’re growing really cold-hardy vegetables, the coming snow and ice potentially (probably) means the end of your growing season. I’ve been growing a lot of herbs this season and am totally not ok with letting all my hard work go to waste by just having the herbs die in the snow and become unusable, and I’m guessing you’re not ok with it either! So, you could do what I did last year (spend an entire day digging up the herbs, putting them in pots for the winter, and getting a fungus gnat infestation because you brought the bugs in from the outside…), OR you could learn from my mistakes and do what I’m doing this year: drying them! It’s super easy and works on any herb. Here’s the process:

  1. Start by cutting your herbs. If you’re not cutting the whole plant down for harvest, you’ll want to make the cuts just above where a leaf is so that the plant is encouraged to grow back.
  2. Tie your cuttings together. You can use garden twine or something fancy, but I always just use twisty-ties.
Twist-tied bunch of oregano

3. Hang the bunches of herbs upside-down to dry. You’ll want to hang them in a dry place so that they dry fully. You can hang them from really anything- counter handles, a small hook, or anything else you can think of.

4. Wait until the herbs have shriveled and crumble to the touch. This could be anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks, depending on how dry your air is and how warm the room is.

And that’s it! Now you can crumble the herbs off the stems into spice jars and use the herbs all winter. Like I said, this works well with any herb, so go nuts. You could even use this technique if you bought a packet of fresh herbs from the store that you won’t use up before it goes bad. Hope this helps you save those herbs that you’ve worked so hard to grow! Stay warm, and happy cooking!

Slow Cooker Tomato Sauce

Lunch and Dinner

Hi, all! It’s been a while since I wrote last, and I hope you’ve been well since then! Hard to believe it’s already October, when all the good fall harvests happen. I’ve been hard at work tending my own little garden, and have suddenly been overwhelmed by a ton of tomatoes ripening all at once! I was wondering what to do with all my tomatoes until I saw a recipe in my favorite magazine, EatingWell, for a slow cooker tomato sauce. You don’t even have to peel the tomatoes! It fit the bill perfectly and the result is so good that I wanted to share it with you! This recipe works best when you use a fleshy, rather than a seedy, tomato, such as a Roma or Brandywine (which happens to be what I’ve been growing). Here are the ingredients:

  • 6 pounds tomatoes
  • 2 cups chopped white or yellow onion
  • 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1, 6oz can tomato paste
  • 3 tbsp minced fresh garlic
  • 2 tbsp finely chopped fresh oregano
  • 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
  • 4 tsp granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt, divided
  • crushed red pepper to taste

Cut tomatoes in half lengthwise. Gently squeeze out the seeds and discard them.

Before…
After!

Mix onions, oil, garlic, vinegar, sugar, tomato paste, oregano, and 1 tsp salt in the bottom of a 6 quart (or bigger) slow cooker.

Layer the cut tomatoes on top of the onion mixture.

Cover the slow cooker and cook on Low for 4 hours or High for 2 hours (I’ve used High both times I’ve made this). After the cooking time is over, uncover the slow cooker.

Puree the mixture until chunky using either an immersion blender, or a regular blender in batches.

Set the lid of the slow cooker slightly askew on the cooker and cook until the sauce has thickened, an additional 3 hours on High or 6 hours on Low.

Season with the remaining salt and crushed red pepper to taste. You can either use it now, or you can portion it into quart-size freezer bags and freeze it for up to 6 months.

All ready to freeze!

Ta-dah! No more tomatoes left on my counter (well, until the next day when I went back out to check my tomato plant) and I have sauce to last me for several spaghetti nights! I highly recommend this recipe (and EatingWell magazine!) and hope you enjoy it! Happy cooking!