Fresh tomato sauce

As summer wanes, I picked the last and first of my San Marzano tomatoes. the upside-down tomato planter that looked so promising has proved to be a dud. I think part of the problem is that when you water tomato plants upside down a lot of water drips down on the plant, which promotes fungus. So I ended up with just a small basket-full of tomatoes. Exactly enough for one batch of tomato sauce.

I've been working hard to eat my garden bounty as it ripens. I've been eating tons of cucumber/tomato/basil salads and the squash I grew was delicious prepared simply. Sliced and fried in olive oil along with thickly sliced onions. This tomato sauce came wonderfully. All of the ingredients were either grown by me or bought at the farmers market.

The Farmer & the Cook booth at the Ojai farmers market had some wonderful looking cipolline onions. I still have some garlic left that I grew, along with basil and oregano from my garden.

>Fresh tomato sauce

About 20 San Marzano tomatoes
2-3 tablespoons olive oil1 cipolline onion diced
3 to 4 cloves of garlic finely minced
1/4 cup fresh oregano coarsely chopped
1/4 cup fresh basil coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
1 cup red wine
1-2 cups water

Peel the tomatoes by cutting and x in the end and plunging into a pot of boiling water for 1 minute. Remove from boiling water and plunge into cold water. The skins will come right off. Squeeze each tomato by hand to squeeze out excess seeds and liquids. You don't have to be too rigorous in this, some seeds are fine. Heat olive oil in Dutch oven over medium high heat. Add onions and cook until translucent. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add tomatoes and cook, breaking up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon. Add herbs, salt pepper and wine. Cook over low heat for at least two hours, keeping a close eye on the sauce, stirring and adding water as the sauce reduces and thickens.
I added my lo-carb meatballs (See March 15 post) and cooked the sauce an additional half hour. I served it with spaghetti and Parmesan cheese.

Farewell fair

This is what fireworks look like through fog
Bird's eye view on a foggy night from the ferris wheel
Having fun at the fair

It's been a few days since the fair ended and I'm going through the same kind of letdown I go through after all events I eagerly anticipate, like Christmas. The fair grows each year in its important to me and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because it's the only county fair in California that's actually on the beach, although this year that wasn't a plus because the fog seemed relentless.

I was able to write eight fair stories, which meant that I went there for all of those and then I went back one more night on my own to take pictures. I couldn't enter the baked goods contest this year because the oven is down, but being able to talk to all the ladies at Home Arts who judge and run the contests was a great next best thing.

There were also some really fun stories, like the watermelon cracker eating/whistle blowing and the Eagle Scout who built the interactive exhibit. And the Penny family with their lovely, outgoing self-assured kids were a delight.

I realized this year that I was doing exactly what I want to be doing, which is going to these events and writing about them. On top of that, we were able to bring Kaia to the fair and had a great time w/her, although I had to leave early to cover the naming of the grand champion and reserve grand champion at the fair.

This is also the last week for the peaches. I've made peach preserves, brandied peach, no-sugar-added peach chutney.

So with the fair over, the peaches picked and pickled and my first first day of school, I suppose summer is unofficially over.

Enough about you, let's talk about me

Some of you may be noticing that I seem to be doing a lot more posting these days and that you're learning more than you ever wanted to know about the minutiae of my life and then, again maybe not. But just so you know this is all a part of a concerted effort on my part to create a brand, as such concepts are called in corporatese.

I am a journalist and, as has been widely disseminated, newspapers are imploding. The fact that they aren't the cash cows the moguls had come to expect, as they cleaned up in advertising revenue and posted massive profit margins, has caused considerable angst and upheaval in the industry. Ultimately, I believe this is for the best. Newspapers will get smaller and, with any luck, rededicate themselves to the actual gathering and disbursing of information. And the Sam Zells of the world will be vomited out to take their retched brand of capitalism to some other industry.

Most newspapers have forgotten that the whole point of the enterprise is to be the watchdog of our society. We try to tell the stories that provide insight and understanding of the increasingly baffling world. Most journalists I know are truly dedicated to free speech and the fourth estate. The whole "media bias" and "media conspiracy" things are just laughable for most day-to-day journalists.

While I'm not so naive to believe that deals are brokered behind closed doors -- I remember the very first job I had at a newspaper when a reporter had some water treatment leads that would expose some questionable practices, he was explicitly told to back off because the water district superintendent was a friend of the publisher -- overall journalists live for the stories they tell, trying to be as fair and honest in that telling as they can possibly be. As with all endeavors, there are those who do a better job than others. There are those who have more scruples than others.

But in this new wild and woolly age, one thing seems clear, each of us is in it for ourselves and that means that in addition to gathering facts and chasing down leads, we need to be promoting ourselves and our work. Up to now, I've never been very good at self-promotion, but now I'm giving it a whirl.

My goal is to try to create a reputation for being able to write good, well-written, fair and accurate stories. I'm not terribly picky about the focus of the stories, just as long as they're good and compelling. If I can write about my favorite topics, one of which is food, or do some good by bringing attention to an issue that needs support, such as the stand-down for homeless veterans, which I recently wrote about, then so much the better.

To build this reputation, I feel it's important to do what I love to do, which is write, and to take advantage of the new world of social media, which is heavily dependent on the written word.

So when you see my big blueberry face, yet again, in your news stream prattling on about some meal or some cute thing the dogs did, try not to roll your eyes, and resist the temptation to hide me from your feed. And if you have any ideas for good stories, I'd love to hear them.

So now do you get the photo I used with this entry, throw me a bone? Get it? Cause I want people to give me writing jobs? Get it?)