Kitchen Hazards

Okay this post is going to be part public service announcement, part recipe, part hilaaaaaarity.

Or not.

All you really need to be a parent is a healthy dose of common sense.

 I kid, I kid. I would never let him drink red wine while wearing a white shirt.

I did something last week that was, in hindsight, dumb, and also, probably very expensive. Learn from my mistake.

I was in the kitchen cooking an awesome recipe, which I'll have to remake and post some other time- no pics due to the event follows.

Li'l dude was happy in his Bumbo on the countertop. I gave him a small soft plastic measuring cup to play with. It's so cute to see him gnawing on it! I was all thinking "Oh I should take a picture of this and then someday when he is a world-renowned chef he'll have this picture to look back on and be like 'I think my innate cooking sense came from my mother's insistence I play with kitchen utensils' and then we'll all smile!"

But have you ever noticed that the handle of your measuring cup has a hole in it? Yep.

Totally stuck. Using my vast knowledge of medicine, I tried dunking his fist in a bowl of ice cold water to constrict the blood vessels.

Nope.

I tried lubing it off with olive oil.

Nope.

One call to the pediatrician's office later, and we were packed up on our way to the emergency department. They ended up using the ring cutter to saw it off.  Haven't gotten the bill yet, but I am guessing it would have been much much cheaper to just go buy a ring cutter. Or not even give him the measuring cup in the first place. Lesson learned.

I guess from now on I'll have to let him play with the can opener.

I kid, I kid.

Did you know how easy homemade tomato sauce can be? (I'm too lazy for a clever segue)

I had a bountiful harvest of mutants from the garden this year.

I cut away the funky spots and decided to jar some sauce. Now traditional recipes call for you to remove the skins from the tomatoes. That just seems like extra business. I eat my mashed potatoes with skins, so why not my sauce? One extra step that *is* worth the trouble is roasting your garlic.

Cut the top 1/3rd off your garlic so that the inside cloves are exposed. Make a little tin foil packet, drizzle olive oil over the garlic, and roast at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until cloves are golden brown.

Back to the sauce-
I diced up my tomatoes and tossed them in a large pot, along with my mashed roasted garlic and 1 cup of chopped fresh basil. I let that simmer, covered, for about an hour. I then removed the lid to let some of the water evaporate, and simmered for another 30 minutes. It will make your house smell edible.

Pour into mason jars and refrigerate. Use within a week, or freeze. My ~8 cups of tomatoes yielded 3 1/2 jars.

This is not like traditional thick marinara sauce- it is more watery, but more flavorful, if that makes sense. I paired it with thick linguini noodles. I found it was even better as leftovers, as the noodles soaked up some of the sauce.

This sauce is also great when paired with a red wine. Right, Baby?