Winter...

Today I remembered why I don't like pine trees...especially in winter!  It rained most of the night, and the temperature hovered right around the freezing mark most of the night as well.  Keep in mind that I live just outside of Houston, TX, and we don't normally get weather like this (although this has been a weird winter...just sayin'...).

This was what my yard looked like this morning.  Of course, I had to come home from work early to take these pictures since it was dark when I went to work.

 These pictures give you an idea of how much ice was on the tree when it broke.  It didn't warm up enough all day to melt the ice.  When I got home at 4-ish, it was only about 35 degrees.

Thanks to my son, and my neighbor's son, we got it all cleaned up within about an hour.

Now all I need to do is call a tree service to have the brush pile picked up and the tree trimmed up.  If you look closely at a couple of the pictures above, you can tell that I have some limbs that are still hanging and could come crashing down at any time.

We are blessed that nothing landed on the house, and the beautiful oak on the other side of the yard was not damaged.  But I still don't like pine trees!

There is a hidden benefit to this, as weird as it may seem...I did get in an EXTRA workout today, AND I got over 10,000 steps on my pedometer!

The Tomato Sauce Caper

Have you ever wondered what goes into tomato sauce?  Besides the obvious, of course!  I must say, it is labor intensive, but the end result is worth it. 

I spent last weekend making homemade tomato sauce, with the help of my best friend.  We started with…

We cored, we scored, we peeled, we chopped…

And ended up with this…

Of course, when you undertake a project such as this, one must include…

We ended up with two pots of tomatoes, as the one stock pot was not big enough to hold all of the chopped tomatoes.  And then we started to cook the sauce...added salt, pepper, sugar, tomato paste (to thicken it some)…

That's my friend who helped me make the sauce.  I love her! 

And voila!  Sauce!

 
Sunday I canned the sauce…

So at the end of the weekend, I ended up with…

A trash can of tomato parts…

And 14 pints of sauce that I can use as a base for making all sorts of yummy goodness!

And a new use for the box the canning jars come in...

This is Cooper.  Anytime there is an empty box lying around...well, you get the idea!

 
 What is your favorite recipe that uses tomato sauce? Would you ever try to make your own?