A recipe for all those *$%&!@^ tomatoes

I have a huge basket of tomatoes that are just waiting to be used, either for compost or food. I have so many that the whole use issue is leaning toward compost, but I’d rather just eat them and be happy than wait for them to turn into free fertilizer (or mush… that’s always a possibility too). I’ve been looking and hunting around for more ways to use these little beauties, but sometimes it’s hard to get the motivation up to make yet another mess in the kitchen and give my hair another frizzing steam treatment. Yes, I’m that lazy and vain.

Anyway, here’s a recipe that I tried for the first the other night on some friends. They didn’t die and there were no leftovers, so I can only hope that it was a success.

* Pre-heat the oven to 250° or so. God will forgive you if you kick it up to 300° or 350° if you’re really hungry.
* Finely chop a whole onion (I used a sweet onion, but use whatever flips your skirt).
* Peel and quarter one and a half to two pounds of tomatoes, and don’t bother taking the seeds out (no one will notice, trust me).
* Mince enough fresh garlic to ward off Dick Cheney (roughly half a bulb) or add two tablespoons of dried minced garlic and however much garlic powder it takes for you. _I like garlic, so the sauce could have been three quarters garlic and I would have been happy. Adjust for your sensibilities._
* Combine ingredients in an oven safe pan — use a cookie sheet with sides or something similar. The whole “With sides” aspect is important. Burning tomatoes and garlic aren’t exactly aromatherapy.
* Drizzle olive oil all over the mix, add salt, pepper, and any dried herbs to taste, and stir.
* Pop in the oven for an hour and a half to two hours. After the first hour, stir and add any fresh herbs to the sauces, then keep stirring every fifteen minutes or so. Some herbal recommendations are basil, oregano, thyme and just a teeny tiny bit of rosemary (a little goes an awfully long way).
* After two hours, remove from oven and toss with pasta. Spaghetti, linguini, penne and rigatoni all work well with this sauce. I recommend whole wheat pasta, because it tastes better (at least it does to me) and holds an _al dente_ texture better than that white stuff but, again, whatever you like.

This stuff feeds four hungry adults, smells delicious while it’s cooking. You can also mess with the recipe a bit by adding a dash of red wine, balsamic vinegar, or even some sweet vermouth. Don’t knock using vermouth in cooking — it helped me make a mean beef stew on a few occasions. You can also add ground beef or sausage if you like, but this recipe stands on its own as a very nice vegan meal.

Some good side dishes for this are garlic bread (duh), a nice fresh mescalun green salad with balsamic vinaigrette, zucchini and yellow squash sauteed in olive oil with garlic and salt (that’s actually the recipe — I love it when the recipe is the title), or even just regular crusty bread with a good olive oil. If you have room for desert, sherbet or sorbet is always a good bet, or some fresh fruit (mmm…. peaches….). For a wine, since I know nearly nothing about ‘em, we had the ever famous “Two-Buck Chuck,” Charles Shaw vineyard’s Merlot, sold at fine [Trader Joe’s Markets](http://www.traderjoes.com) nationwide. It’s cheap and good for pasta meals.