The Tomato Quest....part deux

The latest in my quest to consume the most amount of tomato sauce that one human can possible consume in a week :D

Nah...not really...but I am on a quest to find out if it's the San Marzano tomatoes that really make the sauce.

On a crazy shopping expedition one night not too long ago Kev and I drove around to just about every grocery store we could think of and bought pretty much every brand of canned San Marzano tomatoes.  So far the conclusion is that Cento D.O.P is the way to go.

Now comes this particular brand.  Rao's.  I think we found this one at either Whole Foods or Fresh Market (wish I woulda kept closer track). In any case, on opening I was happily surprised to find nice, dark red, tomatoes in puree.  I think part of what also makes the sauce so great is if it already comes in puree. Others may just be canned in juice so won't be as rich or thick after cooking.  Anyhow...I'm happy to report that after an hour of simmering with the requisite onion and butter this particular sauce tastes just as yummy as the Cento.  The true test would have been if I'd cooked them side by side but I've got to stop producing so much tomato sauce :D

I would definitely use either this brand of the Cento in a heartbeat.  The house smells yummy and I'm geared up for some simple pasta tonight!

The tomato quest continues!

Now that I'm totally addicted to this simple tomato sauce I've been trying to figure out if any old canned tomatoes will do. In my previous attempt it was painfully obvious that the generic stuff at my grocery store would not do. After some research it appeared that maybe I had to limit my testing to San Marzano tomatoes. The original receipe called for these tomatoes and that's what I used the first time around.

So, off to the grocery store I went. Seems that there are San Marzano tomatoes that are imported directly from Italy (look for the D.O.P stamp) and then there are San Marzano varieties that are grown domestically. In my second attempt I tried the USA San Marzanos. Close in color but no where close in flavour.

OK...so now I'm thinking I need to do a relatively scientific comparison. Off to the grocery store I go again (actually I think I scoped out 3 stores) and come home with the original Cento D.O.P and a couple of other brands that are all imported from Italy.


Today's experiment pits Cento D.O.P against Zia Rosa, also D.O.P

On initial inspection the color looks to be about the same. The consistency of the Cento looks thicker. The Cento smells fuller and maybe a little sweeter. I think the Zia Rosa may smell a little more acidic.

The true test will be at the end when we do the taste test :)

Both cans go into separate pots where one onion and 5Tbsps of butter go in and the simmering begins. An hour later the tomatoes have been broken down and the sauce is ready to go. The taste test says Cento is still the way to go. It's sweeter, slightly thicker, and more tomato-ey. The Zia Rosa isn't far off but is less full flavour-wise and isn't as rich bodied. I think it's just a little watery compared to the Cento.

Nevertheless it's all still good and now I have two batches of sauce that will tie me over until...oh, maybe Monday?? I still have two other cans of tomatoes that will undergo the same testing. It'll be interesting to see if anything measures up to the Cento.

While the sauce was on the stove I was busy knitting up some cotton dishcloths. Will show a picture of those when they're done :)

All tomatoes are not created equal....

This I found out when I substituted a fairly common brand of whole peeled tomatoes in a recipe that recommended San Marzano tomatoes. But seriously...how different can a can of tomatoes be? The color, the sweetness, the ripeness was all "off" in the cheapo brand. I went to the grocery store today to buy another can of the "right" stuff and I couldn't believe my eyes. The freakin' can was $6.99!! Now I know I didn't pay that price the first time. Or at least I don't think I did?!? I just know I was looking for San Marzano tomatoes and picked up the first can I saw. Maybe I did wind up paying the premium but now that I've tasted the difference I think it's worth it.

Here's some interesting info about San Marzano tomatoes.

Now go out, buy yourself some San Marzano tomatoes (I bought Cento) and make yourself this totally yummalishious sauce. I guarantee you'll fall in love!!

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions
Adapted from Marcela Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking

Serves 4 as a main course; makes enough sauce to lightly coat most of a pound of spaghetti

28 ounces (800 grams) whole peeled tomatoes from a can (San Marzano, if you can find them)*
5 tablespoons (70 grams) unsalted butter
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a heavy saucepan (it fit just right in a 3-quart) over medium heat. Bring the sauce to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free of the tomatoes. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat, discard the onion, add salt to taste and keep warm while you prepare your pasta.

Serve with spaghetti, with or without grated parmesan cheese to pass.

It's 10pm. Do you think it's too late for a bowl of pasta??

The perfect cereal?

I've been meaning to talk about my current, all-time favorite cereal for a while now. I know, I know. It's such a personal thing and what I like may not be what you like. However, I thought I'd throw this out there for all of you who may have seen this particular item in the cereal aisle of your grocery store and thought about it but never bought it.

Yes. I could eat this cereal day and night. Why? It's just everything I want in a bowl of cereal-y goodness. First, and most importantly, the flakes stay crunchy forever! You could leave the bowl sitting while sitting down to update your blog and when you came back your cereal would still be crunchy good!

It's sweet but not too sweet. Just the right touch to prevent it from being bland. Oh...and the strawberries and raspberries. Swoon. Yes...tons and tons of fruit. So sweet and plentiful. This cereal does not skimp on any of the good stuff and that is why every time I go to the grocery store you'll find me walking out with a box. It's panic time in the house if there isn't a box sitting in the cupboard.

Yes. Don't wait. Go buy a box and see for yourself. You won't regret it. I promise! And no. I have no affiliation with the company. Just an avid eater of this particular cereal :)

Hope you're having a better day where you are. It's cold, slushy, and rainy in this neck of the woods. How un-North Carolina.

Busy weekends...

As if the weekdays weren't busy enough DH and I have resolved to tackle all the remaining tasks around the house in hopes that we'll finally get the place into "visitor" shape. We moved into this house in early 2004 and, up until recently, it looked like we had just moved in last week! In my last post you got to see some pics of the master bathroom. We're a little further ahead now with the toilet installed. We were all ready to install the new sink and cabinet until we realized that we accidentally got the wrong sized leg/brackets for the base unit and so we can't finish the install until the replacement parts arrive. Not bad. 90% complete. It's looking really nice :) Will post final pics when that's all finished.

This weekend we were committed to clearing out the front living room. This space had become a repository for all the crap that had migrated from all the other rooms as we worked on them. The time had finally come to turn it into a real living room. So, we put in a couple of hours of dedicated sorting, throwing, and cleaning and miraculously it looks absolutely fabulous!! Just a little more decorating/organizing and we'll have liveable space.

The other big thing we wanted to get accomplished this weekend was to put down new flooring in our little kitchen. When we first moved in we laid down linoleum tile - which looked great initially. However, after a few years of living it started to look less than nice and I convinced DH that it was time to do something about it. Gotta love sales at the local big box home improvement joints. We found some Pergo on blowout and so that's what we're finishing up as I type. It looks like tile but won't be as fragile or require as much maintenance. Certainly the installation was 10x easier than tile! Overall cost for our little kitchen? $100 in materials and some sweat equity. Pics to come on this too :)

I managed to get some serious beadmaking done late last night. I had some items that needed to go out for an order so I definitely had to get that done. I cranked out a ton of staple items - no off the wall creating going on - but it was nice to light the torch and get the feel of a mandrel spinning in my hands again. Hopefully I'll have more time over the holidays to work on stuff just for fun.

As for work....it's still going well. I'm enjoying the change of pace and just starting to find the groove. Unfortunately I kinda overextended myself for the next 2 weeks so I may be nowhere near the computer for updates until after the dust has settled.

Life is good. I hope you're enjoying your day as much as we are ours!!

Where does the time go?

Checking in quickly and realizing that the last time I wrote anything was the beginning of September. Geeze. Time really does get away from us. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Good in the sense that things progress quickly without incident, bad in that I feel I haven't accomplished anything in the time that has passed.

So...let's see what's new since the last time I posted. Well...big thing is I started a new job - two actually. I finally got rid of the cancer that was my old job and moved on and I have to say that, so far, I'm a much happier person. I work when I want. No nights, weekends, or holidays. I get to work in a bunch of different units so there's no getting into any of the silly politics and whatnot of being in one place. And...I get paid more than I did at my last job. All in all I think things are looking good :)

DH is just cruising along after his surgery in September. Aside from the humongo scar that's left he's back to his old, spunky, self. I am very thankful for his superb surgeon and gastroenterologist. Keeping my fingers crossed that DH stays in remission for...well...the rest of his life.

We started gutting the bathroom just before the last hospitalization and when the time was right afterwards we picked the project back up. I'm hoping for it to be complete by next weekend. We tore up the old tile floor, wallpapered over the old stuff and repainted the walls, laid a new floor and now all that's left is to install some trim, the toilet, and the new bathroom sink/cabinet. I'm really excited. This one is going to look fab! Here are some before and work-in-progress pics.

This is just after we finished busting up the old floor. Don't you just love the wallpaper? Nothing like cabbage roses and navy blue wallpaper to welcome you into a bathroom. It had to go!

Unfortunately, the builders applied the wallpaper directly to the sheetrock (which we knew from another project earlier on) and so it was not an option to remove the paper. Since we didn't want to hang all new sheetrock we took the easy route and just gave the wall a new covering which we painted to match the bedroom.

You can't really tell the color in the next picture
but it's a soft greyish green. Very bathroom appropriate and kinda spa-like. We found some textured wallpaper that they were discontinuing at the local home improvement store and used that to cover the old flowery stuff. The nice thing about textured paper is that it hides all the underlying imperfections. Painting over it then gave us brand-spankin' new walls and I'm super thrilled with the results.

It was my very first time hanging wallpaper and I did it all by myself so I'm giving myself a big pat on the back :)



Here you can see the whole room top to bottom. We need to put new window trim up. You might get a better idea of the room color. We laid new concrete backer board on the floor in preparation for new tile.

Because the subfloor was warped just enough we had to use levelling compound underneath the backer board to make sure there weren't any major dips or bumps. I was not about to lay tile floor to have it crack on me!

So far things are looking good an level and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we evened things out enough that everything will stay intact :)




So here is the almost finished result. We got the walls done and the tile floor is down. We used a prefab patterned tile. It's alternating hexagons with 1" squares in between.

When the bathroom is fully completed I'll take bigger closeups so you can see more of the details. I'm super duper happy at how this is turning out. Mainly because I don't think anything could have been worse than what was there before!

More to come on the bathroom reno in the next little while.

Hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are. The sun is shining here today and I'm going to leave DH to the trim work in the bathroom while I fire up the torch and kiln to see if I've forgotten how to melt glass!

Playing catch-up...

Well, doesn't time fly? Since the last time I wrote there are been tons of new happenings. The one that comes to mind first is that DH wound up back in the hospital. Long story moderately short....he had an abscess that was not fully treated and it wound up doubling in size. Fortunately for him it didn't rupture and they were able to drain it. Unfortunately the consensus was that the time had finally come for him to have surgery to fix the "broken" innards.

I could go on and on about how I think his gastro doc did a shabby job of addressing the initial problem but that would just make me mad and what's done is done. So, instead I'll tell you that DH had surgery today. Right hemicolectomy. Basically they took out part of his large colon and small intestines and stitched the two ends up. My DH, being the unique individual that he is, of course has to have insides that aren't quite the norm and, therefore, the surgeon had a bit of harder time of things than expected. Overall though the end result hopefully should be the same but with a bit more of a scar. Let me just say that I can fully understand how people go broke trying to pay for medical care down here. If we didn't have premium health insurance we'd be crying over the bills right now. Last hospital stay: 4 days = $20,000. I don't even want to guess that this stay will amount to.

Most of my/our time has been spent in the hospital - getting treatment....getting ready for the surgery. I don't think I've worked much in the last few weeks but I've also come to accept that there is more to life than work and family is my top priority right now. However, in between dealing with all the health issues I did find time to consider other options work-wise and will be making some changes in the next few months. Thankfully the healthcare profession is one in which there are always job openings allowing for all sorts of flexibility and mobility.

Not much else to tell about. I did have my 2month post-op eye follow-up. That went well. At one month I was seeing 20/60 in my right eye, 20/30 in my left. Last time I was seeing 20/30 in my right and 20/25 in my left. I'm hoping for more improvement although I can't really complain as, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I can actually see without any visual aids. I think before the surgery I was 20/800 so any improvement is amazing to me!

Haven't found time to do much creatively. Lots of projects got started and then put on the backburner when we found out that DH was going to have surgery. We started gutting the master bath and got halfway done so that's got to be finished at some point. The stairs still need to be done (ongoing project!). Once those things are done it's small finishing touches around the house and then we'll actually be able to have people over. Yay!!!

No beads or otherwise to talk about/show. Maybe in the next week or so.

Hope you're having a good one wherever you are!! Stay healthy and safe :)