instead of what i should be doing

i have an article due tomorrow...so of course here i am procrastinating. it’s a short 800-word piece on a public art project, i have all the interviews done already, so i’m actually not too stressed. just lazy.

this is a big week for me, work-wise. i have the article and photos due tomorrow, then thursday and friday i’m going back to the literary center--they’re paying me to proof and edit a 300+ page writing anthology (which i would’ve done for free, but don’t tell them that), then saturday i have a wedding to shoot (aahh!).

pretty sure i can do the writing and photos, i know i can do the editing, but good god, the more i think about photographing someone’s wedding...such a significant event, and it’s so important that it’s captured properly, i feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to do the best job possible. the bride is awesome and laid-back, i understand what she wants and she understands how i work, but still, aahh! i have confidence issues.

a friend to whom i gave a tomato plant last spring was able to eat her first two ripe paul robesons today! she emailed me yesterday to ask about when to pick them--i had mentioned to her husband that it’s a black tomato, so he was seriously waiting for them to turn black. how cute is that?

no large heirlooms for me today, but i did have my largest-ever small-tomato harvest. two pounds of just the li’l ones! cool weather be damned.

i had a craving for faux-meatballs and red sauce, and i was trying to remember if i had any tomato sauce...then i realized i could make some from scratch! so that’s what i did.

in a glass baking dish i combined about a pound of tomatoes, five cloves of garlic, some fresh-picked oregano and thyme and drizzled olive oil over everything then roasted it in the toaster oven at 425 for about 20 minutes.

then i ran it all through this wonderful vintage food mill i picked up from a secondhand shop. i was amazed at how quickly and efficiently it worked--i wish i’d had this thing when i was making fruit butters, it would’ve saved me hours and i wouldn’t have wasted nearly as much fruit.

after milling i strained the sauce to get rid of seeds, then poured it into a saucepan and added salt, pepper, and a whole handful of chopped basil fresh from the garden.

i brought the sauce to a boil, turned it down and let it simmer for around half an hour, until it thickened to the right consistency. i poured it over pasta and faux-meatballs:

wooow it was delicious. i can’t wait to make more. next time i’ll make a bigger batch...and once i have lots of big tomatoes i’ll make enough to preserve some. i need to invest in a pressure canner one of these days.

yesterday i picked up my jars from the fairgrounds. i won a second place “ball/kerr award” that i didn't know about, for pickles (not sure if that was for the relish or bread and butter), which means i get a $10 gift certificate to use toward canning supplies. plus $12.50 in prize money from the fair.

my mom is hilarious, she squirrels away all her state fair premiums in a little box and holds on to them as a keepsake. hundreds of dollars in that box. buying canning supplies is the only purpose for which she’s willing to dip into the money. not sure about this, but it seems like whenever she does any preserving she pretends that she’s poor and she has to put up food to survive...it’s a weird mood she gets into, she starts speaking with just a pinch of her old minnesota accent and using old-timey midwestern language, acting all frugal and phobic of wastefulness like an elderly lady who lived through the great depression. i totally get it, but i think it’s funny anyway.