Toma(y)to, toma(h)to

I had to figure out what to with my basil. I happened to have two big cans of organic crushed tomatoes, so I decided to do a test run of a tomato sauce and freeze it for later. I searched all over the Internet and my Joy of Cooking cookbook for inspiration and came up with a recipe.

1 yellow onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 c. olive oil

4 TBSP fresh basil, julienned

1 carrot, grated

2 28oz cans crushed tomatoes

1 tsp salt, then to taste

Sweat onion and garlic in olive oil until onion translucent. Add carrot and basil and cook until softened. Add tomatoes and salt, simmer gently for 30 minutes. A lot of recipes use sugar to sweeten the acidity of the tomatoes. I like the idea of using the natural sweetness of carrots. I froze two small containers of the sauce and used the little bit that was leftover for my bread sticks. The sauce was great with them. We'll see how it is with pasta.

I've harvested about 3 cups of Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes from my container garden. I've already made salsa along with my jalepenos, but I may chop them up and make another batch of basic tomato sauce. I plan on making pesto from the remaining basil.