Skinless Tomato Sauce

The other week, I decided to set out on what I considered to be a grand cooking adventure. I was going to blanche something for the first time in my life. This is how it went:

I started with some tomatoes from my garden:

I then cut an X in the bottom of each tomato. Not very deep - just a little slice.

I then boiled water, and when it was boiling vigorously, I plopped in the tomatoes.

One minute later I used my slotted spoon to scoop them out and plop them in a bowl of ice water.

I kept them in the ice water for a few minutes to make sure to fully cool them down.

Then - much to my great surprise and delight - it worked! Look at this:

It's a tomato, peeling itself basically. The skin is just falling off.
I helped it a bit to get it all the way off and ended up with lots of naked tomatoes.

At this point I could have done any number of things with the tomatoes. I thought about cutting them in half and freezing them. But I figured it I did that, I would just thaw them later to make sauce of them. So why not make sauce now, then freeze the sauce.

So I chopped them up and threw them in a pot.

Simmered for some time (probably 2 hours when all was said and done, though they would have been fine at 30 or 45 minutes as well)

Then took my trusty potato masher and gave them a good mash.

I added some herbs, and eventually it looked like this:

I poured it in a jar, and will use it for spaghetti, baked pasta, pizza, etc etc etc.