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I went out to the garden today and cut off more broccoli. It took me several years before I realized that when you cut your broccoli head off, leave the plant in the ground and more broccoli will sprout from the plant. Last year I probably put more broccoli up from the sprouts than the actual first heads that came on. Don't ever cut your head and throw the plant away!! Even though our broccoli did not do well this year I got another package of broccoli today for the freezer. Also, if you forget about your broccoli and it starts to flower, the flowers are just wonderful in salads. It's worth it to just leave your broccoli plants in the garden, I promise! What have you got to lose? Try it!
I ended up with 7 quarts of Tomato Sauce and 9 quarts of what I call Tomato Junk Sauce. Tomato Junk Sauce is okay to eat, it's just not as pretty. I take all of my yellow and red cherry tomatoes and dump them in a pan (after cleaning them of course), and mash them with a utensil, like a potato masher, and cook them up. I don't peel them or anything (which is not a bad thing because the majority of the vitamins and minerals are just beneath the skin and when you peel a tomato you're taking away a good many of its health benefits). This is where if I have any leftover red tomatoes or too many sliced tomatoes in the frig - I just dump them in too. Then I take an immersion blender and blend them up real fine and continue to cook them down until the sauce is the consistency I desire and then I can it. The only reason I call it Tomato Junk Sauce is because it's just a reminder that it isn't the perfect tomato sauce. I've also added an occasional leftover zucchini or squash whenever I've had way too much but this year it was just straight tomatoes. Tomato Junk Sauce goes great in vegetable soup, chili and makes pretty good spaghetti sauce as well. I don't really know what other people do with all their cherry tomatoes but this is a bang-up way to use them. Oh, don't get me wrong, I add the lemon juice to each quart and a 1/2 tsp. of salt - that's just the norm. I put Tomato Junk Sauce up just like regular Tomato Sauce. Check out the pics below.
The grocery store had leg and thigh pieces of chicken on sale for $.60 a pound. I'm telling you, that's hard to beat and when you bake a couple of those, add some macaroni & cheese and sliced tomatoes, it's a meal that's hard to surpass. It's easy and it's supper!! Talk to ya tomorrow!!