Christmas Day

Christmas Day arrived again! So very quickly.....

It was a brilliant day of B's family lunch, a walk through the park and a quick stop at my sisters, lots of driving but well worth the effort.

Christmas Eve

 

 I realised Christmas Eve that I had a glut of tomato's to use up before they went bad, our tomato plants had been doing wonderfully and producing these gorgeously red, lush tomatos.  So we took them all off the plant, red and green both, then sliced them up with some bacon, onion and garlic.  Browned the bacon and onion in some good olive oil, and threw all the tomatos into a deep pan.  After the onion and bacon was browned I put them all together with some pepper, and some left of tomato vinegar mixture from making relish a few weeks back.

I let if simmer for hours, it was silky and delish.  The vinegar made it a tad sweet in the end, but we devoured it Christmas night and there is still plenty left over in the freezer. YUM!

 

A day to Relish....

 

 I managed to buy 10 kilos of tomato's for only $4.99! Bargain! So Tomato Relish weekend it was.

We bought 4 kilo's of onions, which are never fun to chop up, but essential for a decent relish.

Saturday morning I pottered around, tidied the house a little, made sausage rolls from scratch (well with frozen pastry anyway), B slaved away in the vegie patch as usual and the cats frolicked in the gorgeous daylight.  KT arrived and we began......chopped, sliced, chopped, sliced, our way through 14 kilos of produce, added salt, then put it all aside.

While we waited for the salt to do its thing (overnight), we cheerily made watermelon, then mango, and orange dacquiri's :) it was a lovely day, home made pizza for dinner.  Good Company, good beverages, good food, and good relish making :)

Sunday morning arrived too quickly, we put the tomato mixture on the stove, worked as a team to bottle and seal it all.  We made 28 bottles of relish, 4 bottles of tomato stock, and 4 jars of pasta sauce.  Productivity plus.

 We have many more tomatoes about to ripen in the garden, so it won't be much longer before I will be making more relish, however I think I might experiment with the next few batches of relish and pasta sauces, time to try out some new recipes I think.

For dinner I made a beef and vegie casserole with some of the tomato, oniony, salty liquid (stock) we drained early.  It was delish on a bed of creamy, creamy mash potato's.  Why should we go out to dinner when our home grown fruit and veg tastes sooooo much better :)

Sorry this one is a little brief, I am exhausted and my poor brain just doesn't have the juices to be creative today..........