Phew! OK so a bushel of tomatoes is a little more gigantic/cavernous/never-ending than I imagined. In fact after I first began happily slapping pans of tomatoes into my oven for roasting, I looked at the gazillions that were left and—for a minute there—thought I was going to run from the house screaming.

But never mind all that. Over the course of three days last week I processed this parade of sun-warmed Roma magnificence from Highmark Farms in Cookstown, ON.

After first wheeling said bushel home from our local Fairmount Park Farmers’ Market in my Red Flyer wagon, the marathon began. I roasted, I blanched. I blended. I plopped sauce in Rubbermaid containers and made rustic labels (yes I did!). I popped whole tomatoes in freezer bags—with dates clearly marked in blue Sharpie. Those babies are all snug in my freezer now.

But this project didn’t just squirt tomato innards all over my kitchen and trigger eight extra dishwasher loads. Nope. What this project did was renew my appreciation for the quality of a homemade product (more on that later), but also for all the hard work performed by previous generations of (primarily) women.

Here I was proud/exhausted after a short bout of what can only be called “hobby” preserving. Today though, unlike generations past, I have choices. I’m not charged with preserving food to feed my family through a long cold winter. (Isn’t that what Loblaws is for?) 

Seriously though, what I am interested in is upping our consumption of quality local food, and becoming more conscious of all the inputs up and down the food chain. Yes, my project is small-scale. For some of you, one bushel of tomatoes is amateur league—you’re canning somersaults around me. But for those of you who are curious, who’ve been asking me about my tomato pile, I want to share a few thoughts. Here’s what I learned from one lovely locally grown bushel of tomatoes.

The plan
Like many of you out there, I confess to a fear of canning. I hope I get over it, but this year I chose the straightforward route of freezing. And I chose two methods requiring as little labour as possible:

1) Roasted tomato sauce. I followed this recipe from Disney Family.com. After roasting tomatoes (with skins left on) with garlic and herbs, you pulse with an immersion blender to create the sauce. I made one change, swapping in Balsamic vinegar for sugar. (Adding sugar just feels wrong to me.) Frozen sauce keeps four months in the freezer.

2) Whole, skinned tomatoes. I also used this recipe from TLC. Tomatoes keep up to nine months in the freezer.

Time
For me, processing was time-consuming but simple work. For the roasted sauce, after the first couple of batches, I doubled my capacity by putting batches on two oven racks. With the blanching method, once I did it a couple of times, I really sped up.

Quantity
All in all, my $25.00 bushel yielded about 20 Ziploc bags of Roma tomatoes (I was aiming for the same amount as a big can), plus roughly 20 cups of sauce. We ate some of the sauce right away, so it’s a little hard to calculate—yum!

Freezer space
Good news for those of you, like me, resisting the urge to buy a chest freezer. I scrounged enough space for a bushel of tomatoes right in my side-by-side. Two shelves are plenty!

Uses
Already, I've used my sauce to make a hearty tomato soup—just add a bit of stock and cream. I’ll also be making pasta sauce, chili, curries and other soups.

Quality
Best of all, what I’ve noticed right away with this tomatoes-gone-wild project, is the depth of flavour you get. With my sauce in particular, roasting at peak freshness has given me such a unique product--you just can't get this in stores. Will I do it again next year? Sign me up. I know the kind of work I’m getting into, but I'm also thrilled by what I get out of it!

When it comes to being environmentally friendly, I like steps that DON'T involve: a) total deprivation, and/or b) obscene price tags. While solar panels, for instance, would be great for my house, that’s not a simple or affordable proposition—at least not yet.

One great-but-doable step I have taken though is to become a “less-meatarian”. This is a term and lifestyle change I first came across while reading New York Times writer Mark Bittman. Basically it means eating a whole lot less meat. How you do that is up to you.

Does skipping the occasional double-cheeseburger really matter? The UN has estimated that livestock production creates almost 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. And according to Bittman, a University of Chicago study has “calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius.” But eating like this could also save you money, lower your risk of cancer and heart disease, and renew your passion in the kitchen. 

Let’s be honest. We’re not all inclined to forgo meat completely. (I’ll include my family here because we still love a nice steak now and then. And if you think everything tastes better with bacon, uh, I’m going to say you’re so, so right.) Realistically, many observers feel we have a better chance of turning things around via the less rigid principles of less-meatarianism — making real changes, but without banishing Thanksgiving turkeys and weekend eggs Benny forever.

At our house, we’ve been less-meatarian for years. Okay, we blow it a bit during BBQ season, but overall, the changes have stuck. Rather than a sense of deprivation, our tastes have shifted so we now actually crave all those veggies. Over the next few Mondays, in Meatless Monday tradition (which actually began in World War I — who knew?), I'll share some of my favourite veg recipes. 

But I'd love more variety over here too! Have a great meatless recipe to share? Please post it. I may just try your dish and show the results!

More:
The Meatless Monday movement, www.meatlessmonday.com/
Mark Bittman’s article, Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler
My previous post about food waste
My article on Reducing your family’s meat consumption

I’ve been pitching stories about food waste to magazines for a couple of years with no luck—until now. Later this year I’ll see one published in a parenting magazine. (I’ll link to it when it's out.)

Have we reached the tipping point on food waste? There’s definitely more buzz lately. Last month the UN launched a global campaign to cut the “1.3 billion tonnes of food lost or wasted each year” around the globe. 

In 2010, Jonathan Bloom, a U.S., author and activist — tireless champion of waste reduction—released his book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It). Imperfect looking (but perfectly edible) produce, like the tomato above, is one of the foods he says most people would toss.

At our house, we got fed up with food waste several years ago after an embarrassing clear out of our freezer. As my husband and I pulled out package after package of food—snowy, unappetizing victims of freezer burn, quite literally gone to waste—I resolved it wouldn't happen again.

It's been a fascinating journey—but way more uncomfortable than I expected. The reasons we waste food aren’t very flattering. Sometimes we’re as finicky as our kids. (Funny looking tomato? I don’t want to eat that.) Or we’re conspicuous consumers. We buy glorious cartfuls of (local, organic) food at all the right shops and markets but waste half of it because, let's get real, we hit the drive-thru three times a week. Or we’re just plain greedy. We want choice, four kinds of bread in the bread basket, even if we've cut back on gluten and only make sandwiches twice a week. (Guilty.)

But other factors are at work too: our hectic lifestyles, and a consumer culture pressuring us to buy, buy, buy. Anyway, whatever's to blame, we all know where it leads—to nasty stuff growing at the back of our fridges, freezers and pantries. The huge takeaway though is that wasting food has big-time environmental, financial and social consequences. As Bloom writes: “Wasting food squanders the oil and water used to produce it, and food rotting in landfills creates climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.” This is also food that hungry people could have eaten.

The upside? I’ve found turning things around isn’t actually that hard—a little planning here, a little family communication there—and you can save quite a bit of coin too. According to one estimate, the average family of four wastes more than $2,000 worth of food every year. How would you like to spend those savings?

Does food get wasted at your house? Have you found ways to waste less? I’d love to hear about it.