Equipment Failure

The rain was pouring down quite hard this morning. As I got out of bed I thought that it just might be the perfect day to stay inside and drink coffee all day, perhaps do some baking, read a book, relax. That didn't happen. I am physically unable to watch food go bad right beneath my eyes as I fail to preserve the garden bounty; therefore, as soon as the pounding rain stopped I trucked myself outside to gather the harvest. 

I used the handy dandy Vita-Mixer, aka blender with a lawn mower engine, to puree some tomatoes before I froze them. I ended up picking much more than I preserved so there shall be more to do in a couple of days. One thing I have learned is that one should never refrigerate tomatoes. They lose all their great flavor and left a couple of days on the counter they ripen to perfection. These were so dark red and gorgeous. I also have some in the dehydrator right now making homemade not so sunny sun-dried tomatoes. 

I also decided to put up some more pesto in the freezer. After making my first batch of almonds, garlic, basil, salt, olive oil, and thinned with water I ran into a bit of a technical difficulty. Let's just say equipment failure. The Cuisinart failed me. The very sturdy metal blade broke in mid-processing. No good.

I am left with a bunch of chunked almonds and a large portion of basil still needing to be processed. After immediately calling the Cuisinart customer service to check on my warranty I am greatly relieved that I can get a replacement blade for free. I do not have to pay the $35 the online store charges for that metal blade. Holy cow. My customer service man was very nice and he actually seemed genuinely concerned about the blade breaking off in my processing. He wanted to make sure nobody was hurt and that I was able to get the pieces out before somebody ate some metal. Super nice guy.

I then had to turn to the ancient, much smaller food processor that my mother has. It eventually did the trick and I think I'll be set for the winter with my pesto supply. Mmmm. Love me some pesto.