If I made only one preservation all year, my Roasted Tomato Sauce would be it. Yup, a bold statement, and I said it.

The flavor that locally grown vine-ripened tomatoes make as the base for soup/stews/sauces simply pales in comparison to its industry-canned relatives. It’s the reason my winter dishes shine. The slow & home-roasted flavor simply can’t be beat.

I had a big failure this year. My slicer tomatoes were all hit with tomato blight. It’s a tragedy. If you’ve been to my garden, you’ve heard me lament about this, and I blame it on my spring pea plants. I’ll spare you the long story for now. I had hoped to grow enough tomatoes to make my sauce this year, but alas, with this large tomato loss I’m back to my old ways – buying locally from an organic farmer.

I’ve bought flats of tomatoes from a local farmer in the past, but this year, I was hoping to grow enough for myself. This year, as I lamented to a girlfriend of my tomato loss, she followed up a few days later with an email – a local farmer sells flats of Romas, $33 for 10 lbs. I drove to buy 2 flats the next day. My recipe below is available to subscribers of Garden to Kitchen.