the cherry tomato experiment

i am fortunate to be able to travel for work but one of the downsides is all the last minute things to worry about before heading out the door.... taking out the garbage, dealing with leftovers in the fridge, and a new one for me this year is tending to my planters outside. i am so happy that my tomato plants is doing so well but I knew there was no way that I would be able to eat all of the tomatoes that i picked this week before heading to the airport.

not knowing if it was a good idea to freeze cherry tomatoes whole (is it??) i decided to try to make a sauce that i could freeze. i know some of the tomatoes were a bit green but i'll be gone for two weeks and didn't want any of them to go to waste..

so stems came off first and all the little tomatoes got a nice bath....

i cut all of the tomatoes in half and then coarsely chopped up my last onion (see note regarding leftovers above)

i threw in some stuff that seemed to make sense with roasted tomatoes - some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, oregano and a few red pepper flakes. mixed everything together, added some additional olive oil to a baking sheet and spread the mixture out

i baked in the oven at 450 degrees for an hour (turning and stirring once half way through) until the tomatoes had started to brown (man i wish you could smell this!)

i poured the baked goodness into a large stock pot and blended with my hand mixer. i totally recommend placing in a bigger pot that you think you will need to cut down on the splatter. if you wanted, once blended you could put the mixture through a sieve or a food mill to remove the seeds but i don't have one of those so i didn't)

at this point the sauce was ready to go! i almost cooked up some pasta just so i could really give it a try but that would just mean more leftovers so i waited until it cooled down and placed in a mason jar to store in the freezer.

so now just to clean up some dishes and get some sleep before an early flight tomorrow. can't wait to come back from newfoundland to put the cherry tomato experiment to the ultimate taste test!