Home Made Tomato Sauce!

OK so I apologise for not having exact measurements, I'm not a notes sort of person, when I cook food I have a basic recipe and then I just run with it.
Must be doing alright with it cause what I make always comes out so good!
I'm very very picky so if you are too, the ability to tweak recipes to get the flavours and consistency you want is an awesome thing to have

I am somewhat gluten free. I was put on basically the same diet as coeliacs a long time ago and couldn't even tolerate a crumb of normal bread in margarine. Now I can tolerate a little bit, but I still have to be careful.
I asked a gluten free company that I follow to ask their likers if anyone knew of a tomato sauce available in the shops that I could have based on my other allergies, or if anyone had a recipe so that I could make my own.

The post got several replies, and I went over them to decide what I was going to do.
This might be helpful for people on the FODMAP diet -I forget all of what was on there, but as far as I remember I had to cut out things like onion, garlic, chilli, red pepper blah blah
I cannot have these things. Not even the little bit they have in tomato sauce -and it's not even like you have a large amount of tomato sauce when you have it, but it made me sooo sick.

One suggestion was Pams tomato sauce. On the label, if I remember correctly, it said tomatoes, water, and flavourings.

Flavourings.

When you have allergies that are really bad, you need to know exactly what is in products. Not generally. Exactly.

So I emailed them and it came back that it has garlic in it. The "flavourings"? Garlic.

I am still waiting on a reply for select tomato sauce.

It's a bit disappointing that companies don't seem to realise the importance of this.
At the moment companies can put things like red pepper/capsicum, chilli, onion, or garlic under the general heading of "spices" or "flavourings".
I hope that one day companies will be more specific -they wouldn't dare hide wheat or dairy like that these days!

So anyway, there were several recipes, some general, some more specific.

One suggestion was to simmer some tomatoes, herbs, water and beef stock. Well that was out, I can't have red meat and most stock -especially the cubes- have onion in them.

The main theme in the others seemed to be cooking the tomatoes with herbs and oil and vinegar and then sticking the result in the blender.

Sooo that's what I did.
I can only have low acid tomatoes, and where I live they come in 750gm bags, so let's just say that's how much I used haha.

After washing the tomatoes, I sliced each in half, laid them inside up in an oven dish, and then got to work with the flavour.
I sprinkled over some lemon juice and apple cider vinegar and drizzled over some rice bran oil (my preferred oil)
I then added all my herbs. I have some mixed lot that I just chucked in a container since I'd be using it all together anyway -I think there's marjoram, oregano, and sweet basil in there?
I also added dried rubbed mint, some "italian herbs" (a mix by select -you want to read the back, masterfoods has capsicum in it), some home made lemon pepper (again, read the back of what is in the supermarket, all the lemon pepper I found had garlic and onion in it), and some ceres herb salt which is amazing.
I stuck the whole lot in the oven at a high temp (I think 240C?) and just let them get all soft and squishy.
When they were done, I let them cool, peeled the skin off them, and chucked them in the magic bullet until the mix had reached my preferred consistency.

You may want to add a little more oil to the blender if there isn't much liquid in there when you've put all of the tomatoes in. The first time I made this sauce I needed to, but the second time I didn't.

I would say that 750gm bag made roughly 300-400mls

It tastes SO GOOD. You can switch the oil and vinegar around for whatever you prefer, same with the herbs. You can do whatever you like with it!

Don't expect it to be like store bought sauce, you will be disappointed.
It's a very light summery sauce which is exactly the sort of thing I love, so if you're keen, give it a go! It's pretty easy!

~^_^~

Product Review Chill Factor Slushy Maker + Holiday Baking

How crazy have the last couple of months been?!
I have a new blog up and another in the making -a little silly considering how slack I am already with this one....
Anyway, most of you will be recovering from the holiday period (some of you may still be recovering from new years eve festivities), I don't know about anyone else but it's been a bit hectic for me -and I still wasn't spared from the flu! In summer! What?!

I'll start with the slushy maker I guess..
SO. I like slushies. I couldn't tell you why, I just do. I've never really liked hot drinks much. I like coffee -but I prefer it iced. I like tea, but again, iced is better.
I also don't really like "flat" drinks, things like juice on it's own or whatever. I like texture in my drinks and I get it from bubbles or ice or pulp.

I got given a chill factor slushy maker for christmas, and reading the instructions, it seemed like a pretty simple thing to use.
Seemed lol
The basic concept is pretty simple really, you freeze the cup then add your drink then squeeze the cup until your drink is all slushified.
You can only put a small amount of liquid in at a time though, and while it did freeze it reasonably quickly, I found that it wasn't fluid like storebought slushies and there was no way I was going to get that up the straw provided.

I used kool aid (water, soda water, kool aid, artificial sweetener) so I dunno maybe it would work better with other drink? I'm on the sugarfree drink train though (and not complaining either because kool aid is amazing, why don't we have this in the supermarkets?!)

Once I got some into my mouth with the provided scoop it was more like I'd bitten off a chunk of ice block than scooped out some slushy.

At the end of the day while this doesn't give the slushy it claims to, it's still a pretty good product for summer I think -and definitely easier than sticking some ice in the blender!


Now let's talk about holiday baking or christmas baking if you want.
I wouldn't say I "celebrate" christmas because christmas doesn't mean anything to me and I find it an incredibly awkward time at the family (not mine) gathering I go to each year, but I do give gifts where I can.
I guess it's partly out of obligation (I'm being given things so I feel rude not to give something also) but also because it's convenient -things are often more on special at that time of year.

Last year money was a bit tight all round, I was caring for my flatmate who had had a pretty significant surgery only a few weeks before and he wasn't exactly able to go out to buy gifts for his family either so I ended up making... well basically cake pops without the sticks.

I decided I wanted to make something again this year to save money, and because I don't know what the cupcakes to buy for these people haha!
I eventually decided on shortbread. I asked my mum about it she said just find something with lots of sugar and butter. Easy, right? Flour sugar butter.
Turns out that shortbread is my eggs of the baking realm.
(Eggs never turn out right for me. Ever. They just don't go how they're supposed to)

I did a couple of trial batches of shortbread before I found an ok place but despite having a recipe given to me by a CHEF ..a few things weren't going my way!
I also hate my oven. It didn't help.

I also made candy cane bark. That was easier than the shortbread!
Candy cane bark is basically chocolate and candy canes. Crush candy canes, melt white chocolate, mix em together, pour onto a tray.

SO. A couple of tips for festive baking.

I wanted to put some mini m&ms or something in the shortbread to liven it up a bit -but those are expensive!
I had some coloured sugar crystals from something I'd made some other time so I poured in green sugar and pink sugar (didn't have red) to each batch.
You can make coloured sugar yourself too!

Recently I got some candy cane hershey's kisses and I liked how it had little things sorta like hundreds and thousands in them -I wanted to recreate that texture with the candy cane bark so I..
I uh.. well I put hundreds and thousands in them...
It's good! I promise!

Next time I will post about home made tomato sauce! (The joys of having so many allergies)

~^_^~