A fruitful time at the markets.
Going to the Sydney Markets has now become a weekend ritual for us. Almost every Saturday we head off to Lidcombe, fight for parking, fight the crowds, and buy last-minute produce marked down as it’s towards the end of trading. Over the last year, we’ve managed to save so much money yet eat a tonne of fresh fruit and vegetables all the time. Yes, it’s expensive to buy fresh produce through the supermarkets here but we’ve proven you can eat well without it costing the earth.
Now that Caitlyn is older, she’s really appreciating the outing we do to the markets and learning about fresh food. While she never had a problem eating fresh fruit of any kind, Caitlyn used to be a fussy eater when it came to vegetables. She would only eat peas, corn on the cob and cucumber at best. Now Caitlyn will eat raw carrots, baby tomatoes, baby spinach, mushrooms, leeks, broccolini and cauliflower. Going to the markets has helped broaden her eating horizons. While Emma is only 10 months old, she is such a good little eater. She gobbled up almost anything I put in front of her. Just hope that lasts!
I’ve already mentioned this in a previous post but last weekend we managed to score ourselves a box of tomatoes for $2 at the markets. This was an unreal price! We checked over the box before parting with our coinage and was quite surprised that there wasn’t much wrong with the box. The tomatoes only offence was to be various sizes. I guess staff weren’t too keen to sort through these to work out which were sellable and where weren’t. All the better for us!
So we had a box of truss tomatoes to use up. Some were still green but a little time and sunlight will help ripen them up nicely. Instead of eating tomatoes in salad every night, I opted to make my own tomato puree. This is something I remember my mum doing often. Dad raised his own seedlings, planted them in his veggie bed, tended to them diligently, then picked up the fruits of his labour for mum to cook with. I must admit, dad was rather proud of the large plump and juicy tomatoes he grew. It was poor mum that had buckets and buckets of tomatoes to deal with each season.
Good thing it’s easy to make your own tomato purée, you just need a little time and a big pot! And that’s exactly what my mum did.
Tomato puree is a great base for many different recipes. I’ll no doubt cover in upcoming posts – including Tomato Soup, Bolognaise, Pasta Sauce to mention a few. Plus there is nothing nicer than using fresh tomato purée in meals instead of store-bought purée in a jar.
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If you like this recipe, you’ll also love others available here. From pastas to risottos, cookies to desserts, and bliss balls to gluten-free options with everything in between. There is truly something here for everyone. I have developed this website to provide family-friendly recipes where I maximise both fresh produce while minimising cost.
Tomato Puree
Ingredients
- Lots of tomatoes!,
Instructions
- Chop roughly into quarters and put into a large pot. I usually don't core them as this blends up well once cooked.
- Place onto the stove and cook on medium heat for 30 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes to ensure all tomatoes get cooked through.
- Turn down to low heat and cook for a further 1.5 hours until liquid reduces. Make sure you stir tomatoes every 20-30 minutes.
- Use a stick blender, whiz all tomatoes up until a fine and well blended consistency.