\n What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes<\/span>
\n Only two things that money can’t buy<\/span>
\n That’s true love & homegrown tomatoes<\/span><\/h3>\n
Nana Sarullo’s Unbelievable Spaghetti Gravy always began with homegrown tomatoes whenever they were in season. That’s right. Sicilians call it gravy, not sauce.\u00a0 And when they were in season, she mass-produced the gravy and froze it in square plastic quart-sized containers.\u00a0 She had two freezers in her laundry room, which was actually a second kitchen, attached to the garage.<\/p>\n
It didn’t\u00a0 hurt that my grandfather father developed Roman Gardens Subdivision in their hometown of Greenville, Mississippi. Mr. Will Billings’ family had previously owned the land and had a barn in one location for over 150 years.\u00a0 The north section of Pear Lane now occupies the area where the barn was. \u00a0 My grandfather had a few truckloads of that rich soil from the barn delivered to the garden area beside his garage.\u00a0 So now you know why the tomatoes were the size of grapefruits and why Nana needed two freezers.<\/p>\n Nana got me interested in cooking at an early age.\u00a0 I witnessed her using her cooking skill as a blessing to others.\u00a0 There were always a few extra knees under her table.\u00a0 Anyone who\u00a0 knew her, or knew any of her family members, were always welcome.<\/p>\n My sweet Sicilian grandmother passed away many years ago.\u00a0 I\u2019m proud that my brother Peter and I were able to write-down her spaghetti gravy recipe while she was still cooking regularly.\u00a0 When I use the word \u201crecipe\u201d here, I mean that we got her to make a batch of gravy and stopped her as she entered each ingredient. We measured each one before it entered the dutch oven.\u00a0 It was a little awkward for all of us, but we captured it the only way we knew.\u00a0\u00a0 Peter and I still use her recipe occasionally, when time allows.<\/p>\n This is what we recorded over 25 years ago.\u00a0 She made this batch for us using canned tomatoes so we could repeat the process, since we didn’t grow our own tomatoes.<\/p>\n Practice a couple of times, then use your homegrown tomatoes to replace the canned whole tomatoes and diced tomatoes.<\/p>\n Cook 1.5\u00a0 pound of your favorite pasta noodles for every 8 adults.<\/p>\n Add a salad from THIS<\/a> category and you are in for some wonderful Sicilian styled goodness.<\/p>\n At age 12, I was very interested in photography. I took this picture with a Yashica 124 camera and then developed it in my darkroom using a Durst 606 enlarger.<\/p>\n Everyone in this picture was NOT interested in photography, but was interested in eating and ready to eat!\u00a0 My Nana and Papa are on the right side.<\/p>\n Six adults, nine kids, two turkeys and three bottles of wine.\u00a0 Hmm.\u00a0 And it apparently is holiday food, but I guarantee that there’s a boatload of spaghetti about to be served!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love music almost as much as food.\u00a0 In Guy Clark’s iconic tune, Homegrown Tomatoes” he details his greatest observation as a songwriter: Homegrown tomatoes – homegrown tomatoes What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes Only two things that money can’t buy That’s true love & homegrown tomatoes Nana Sarullo’s Unbelievable Spaghetti Gravy always began with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bonus-bits","category-past-meals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1007,"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/1007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/52sundaydinners.com\/recipes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Food-Mill-Tomato-Strainer-Crusher.jpg\" "\\"Food")
<\/a>As a kid I remember helping Nana as she blanched bushels of homegrown tomatoes that she and my grandfather raised from a relatively small garden adjacent to their garage.\u00a0 I liked using the tomato strainer, but I will admit that it was pretty messy and I probably didn’t contribute much to the process.<\/p>\nIngredients<\/h2>\n
\n
Preparation<\/h2>\n
\n
For Your Sunday Dinner<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Note: the two vinyl covered chairs on the right side are from the famous YELLOW set.\u00a0 You can read more about them HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n