When you dedicate a day to processing the summer's finest tomatoes, you're not just chopping veggies—you're pouring your heart and soul into a tomato-y adventure. After spending a season planting, pampering, watering, and waging war against garden pests who think they own the place, it's time to cook up some homemade tomato sauce. Having done this before, I wasn't expecting anything less than a delicious pot of saucy goodness and a kitchen that smells like tomato heaven.
Well, at least the kitchen smelled fantastic!
I started with a pot of beautiful homegrown tomatoes, dried basil from our garden, and lots of fresh garlic we harvested earlier this summer. Things proceeded as usual as I ran the cooked tomatoes through the food mill.
Except it wasn't actually per usual... this was a really, really, really watery batch of sauce.
So into the stockpot it went to reduce, and reduce, and reduce some more.
Hours passed and while the sauce became SLIGHT-ly less watery, I realized my dreams of a rich, beautiful sauce were not going to come to pass this year. Here's the kicker: I planned on using the sauce as a base for a meal the next day as we welcomed friends over for dinner. Ugh, new plan needed.
However, it was in that moment that unexpected encouragement came from one of our sons. I was texting the family group chat about the travails of the non-sauce-making day and shared the pictures above. Our son replied, "That looks like great soup! We should have that with our friends and make fancy grilled cheese!" His plan and enthusiasm for what felt like a mistake to me was just the encouragement I needed in that moment.
We ended up switching gears for dinner with our friends, but we are indeed enjoying the summer-harvest-it's-not-sauce-it's-soup-tomato-soup for dinner tomorrow night with the fanciest grilled cheese I can muster!
Choose to be an encourager!
