I tend to buy in bulk because I shop once a week for my family, I do my best to determine what I’ll need but with kids it’s difficult sometimes. I don’t know about you but one week my kids will love a particular food and the next week if I try to give it to them, it’s like I’ve offered them poison. As they get bigger, this becomes less of a problem, in fact my oldest son who is now a teenager is very adventurous with flavors and he eats constantly.

There are two foods that I don’t mind having extra of every week because I make use of them regularly and those are bananas for banana bread and tomatoes because I simply turn them into my slow cooker marinara.

In order to use fresh tomatoes to make sauce, you need to peel and seed them. Professionals do this in kitchens all the time because we often have left over produce which will affect the bottom line if they don’t get used. Here are my tips and tricks for peeling fresh tomatoes.

Start with a pot of boiling water, use a large pot and fill it 3/4 full, set on high heat to boil. Take your over ripe tomatoes, I usually have 5 or 6 but since you’ll be supplementing the rest of the tomatoes in the recipe with canned, it’s fine if you have a lot or only a few. Core each tomato by cutting a circle around the stem end and removing the stem. Then cut an “x” into the bottom of each tomato, this will help the boiling water to get under the skin and loosen it quickly.

Once the water is boiling, add the tomatoes to the boiling water being careful it doesn’t overflow. Allow the tomatoes to boil for 2-4 minutes until the skin where the “x” is marked begins to loosen from the tomato. The time will depend on how ripe the tomato is and the size of the tomato.

Remove the tomatoes from the water and submerge in cold ice water to stop the cooking process. Place on a clean tea towel or cutting board and peel off the skin.

Once the skin is removed, cut the tomatoes in half and squeeze each half to remove seeds, the seeds will squirt out so wear an apron. And voila! You have now peeled and seeded tomatoes like a pro. You can add these to your slow cooker to make sauce, freeze them for future use or at this point you could start the canning process if you had a bunch of tomatoes from a farmers market.