Heirloom day.

I'll have you know that I am fated by the gods to never have a good night's sleep. Several times during the day yesterday, the lights in my room and in the adjacent bathroom flickered at random. The power grid in Shepherdstown is not reliable at all, and the power goes out frequently here, so I concluded that the problem with my lights was related to the power company and not wiring in my house. I started getting suspicious when the lights and everything else in my room would suddenly turn off and then not turn back on again. Normally everything comes back on after a couple seconds, but not this time. Grumbling to myself, I wandered over to the breaker box in the kitchen and tried to figure out if anything had been tripped. Nothing. Everything looked okay. Hmmm. I flipped the main breaker off and then back on again and the lights and other electronic devices in my room hummed back to life. Curious, yes, but not entirely out of the ordinary. 

Before I actually got to bed, this whole scenario happened once more. After the second time I looked around to make sure none of the gizmos in my room were plugged in only part-way or had power cords with chewed or frayed sections. Nope. 

So, after writing my blog, I went to bed. This is where the fun starts. I had only a window fan running and my alarm clock. Pop! Beyoow! Off goes everything. I curse my way back over to the breaker box and perform the on/off operation. I go back to bed. 10 minutes later... Pop! Beyoow! Again to the breaker box. You can see where this is going, right?

Anyway, I told my landlord about this morning and suggested that there might be a short somewhere in the wiring. After describing the problem to him he said "I've never heard of anything like that happening." Wait, WHAT?! I don't even have the patience at the moment to describe the rest of the conversation. 

All this talk of the power going out and me not getting a lot of sleep is boring. Let's get on with the good stuff. So, I brought my camera with me to the farm today so that I might finally learn the names of all the varieties of heirloom tomatoes that we grow. I took a couple shots which I will upload tomorrow or the following day. For now, I want to post some photos of the insanely-delicious pasta sauce I just made with four big and juicy heirloom tomatoes. 

Here's the recipe, btw:

4 big Heirloom tomatoes, chopped

1/2 head of garlic chopped

handful of fresh italian basil, chopped (I used sweet basil)

olive oil

sea salt

freshly ground peppercorns

Heat up a large saucepan on low/medium, and drizzle enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Throw in your chopped up tomatoes, skin, seeds*, and all in the pan and bring to a low boil while stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, heat up a frying pan and throw in some olive oil and then toss the garlic on for a minute or two - just until the garlic is golden or light brown. Then immediately dump the garlic and the oil into the saucepan with the tomatoes. 

Cook for 20 or 30 minutes and then just as you are about to take the sauce off the burner, toss in the chopped up basil. Cover and let sit for a couple minutes. Stir before serving.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

* heirlooms usually don't have many seeds anyway, and there's now evidence that the seeds are full of flavor and shouldn't really ever be filtered out.

This was actually my first time ever making homemade tomato sauce and I have to say that I kicked total ass. I added a little bit too much salt to my sauce, but other than that, it was mind-blowing. This may seem obvious to most of you, but in case you didn't know, fresh tomato sauce is supposed to be a little watery. It's really okay - you can just soak up the leftover sauce with some garlic bread. :)