Would You Drink This?

Spaghetti Tuesdays

I make the best spaghetti sauce at Whole Circle. It may be the "best" because I've cornered the market. I make spaghetti every Tuesday, so I've kind of got a de facto exclusive on the right to make spaghetti. I've preserved some, for Deborah and I to have this winter, using tomatoes from my biointensive garden.

The ingredients are flexible, for example where I say 0 to 3 Tbs thyme, below, means thyme is not absolutely necessary. So, as a minimum this recipe requires only garlic and tomatos. You can add any one of the other ingredients, or none of them. The garlic is from the 20 varieties I grew last year. It tastes fantastic.

My typical spaghetti sauce ingredients:

0 to 5 large onions, diced

1 to 2 bulbs garlic (that's right, whole bulbs, not the cloves which make up a bulb), minced or cut fine.

A huge bowl of tomatoes, cut in half, or whole, if your in a rush

0 to 5 bell peppers, cut into pieces (option: Cut in half and cook both sides under broiler until almost black)

0 to 2 cans tomatoe paste

0 to 1 hot pepper, diced

0 to 3 Tbs fresh thyme

0 to 1/2 cup red wine

Saute onions until dark golden brown. Add minced garlic, stir into onions, within 30 seconds add remaining ingredients. Simmer ten minutes, serve on noodles.

CRAFT Day visit to The New Farm

The monthly CRAFT (Regional Alliance of ) visit is to The New Farm. Brent and Gillian sell lettuce to high end restaurants in Toronto. They harvest their lettuce only once, whereas Whole Circle Farm cuts from the same lettuce plant 5 or more times (once per week). The Whole Circle lettuce may be slightly more bitter, and therefore fetches a lower price. But our labour input is less. We plant once, and get 5 cuttings. New Farm gets just one harvest per planting. Their price is higher than California lettuce, but it lasts longer. Note the verdant field in the below photo - for green manure they grow mixed cover crop: peas, sunflower, rye, and more.