Update on food mills, food strainers, etc...

While that manual food mill made my sauces much smoother it was a ton of work still. So when I saw this Weston Tomato Strainer I thought AH-HA and it was on sale. It was also mentioned on several tomato canning blog posts so I thought this is the one.

I got done so fast with a sink full of tomatoes that were small, fingerling type it blew my socks off. I was able to go from start to sauce in the crockpot in less than an hour. I used the marinara recipe that came with it and was very pleased. Except I didn't cook on stovetop very long. I did start it in my big wok. But then I transferred batches after boiling to the crockpot so I could leave it cooking all day. Then that night I added soy crumbles and some more seasoning to taste, cooked the noodles and Pat said it was the best sauce yet!

Yeah!!!!! I'm all for that when it's easier too. So when wer're back in Peoria I need to make homemade V-8 since i have tons of carrots and celery in the garden this year. 

 I will correct the recipe if I am wrong but as I remember this is what I did.

Slow Cooker Marinara Sauce

Since I gather this I prefer these measurements:

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 large red onion left in fridge minced

4 carrots, 2 were small the purple and white and 2        orange carrots 1.5-2 inches in diameter and 8          inches long, chopped then minced

7 stalks of celery just cut off leaves then minced

1 tsp heaping or 1 T level of brown sugar (the brown sugar I added to the veggies in oil before tomatoes)

Small sink worth of tomatoes, rinsed, threw out any blemished, rotten, about to rot...ran through Tomato            Strainer and filled largest pyrex glass bowl twice at least

Seasoned to your taste 

So that you have the more standard measurements called for in recipe I'll use those now here.

In the wok, 1/2 cup of olive oil, one cup each of finely chopped/minced red onion, carrots (one purple, one white and 2 orange for fun) and celery (about 7 stalks) cooked for 15 min on medium to low heat in oil to keep from browning. Added a heaping teaspoon that was probably almost a tablespoon of brown sugar. Then put tomatoes through strainer. At first cutting in half but they're so small and oblong started just throwing in whole and worked fine. Filled at least 2 bowls of tomatoes just kept going until it would fill the crock pot. Then added dry basil, thyme and rosemary, and pepper and salt.  Cooked on the 4 hour setting until I was ready to go to work so probably about half an hour then switched to 10 hour and left.