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Monday, Sept. 06, 2004 - 6:51 p.m. Beavis called my coworkers and myself into the breakroom a little bit early tonight. Seems he had a videotape for us to watch. By orders of the director of the North Dakota Department of Transportation, no less. It wasn�t long- less than 6 minutes total. But it was hard to watch none the less. What was in this video? Just a couple of short clips taken by a television crew in Chicago, showing highway workers over in Illinois goofing off. It seems a local resident was tired of seeing this 7-man crew, day after day, shutting down around 10 am, and then SLEEPING INSIDE OF THEIR TRUCKS AND ON PARK BENCHES, DANCING IN THE ROAD, AND OTHER STOOOOPID THINGS. All this, right in front of his house. This went on for about 20 workdays. They would cut a small stretch of bad concrete (maybe 10� x 30�) each morning, fill it with hot mix (asphalt), roll it in with a compactor, and then� Call it a day work wise. From 10 am until they picked up their cones for the day at 1:30 or so, the 7 man crew did NOTHING for their pay. Why did we have to watch this video? Because the head of our D.O.T. said he didn�t want to catch any of his employees doing the same kinds of things as these guys. I have worked for N.D.D.O.T. for almost 21 full years now, and I can promise you this- I have never felt the urge to dance in the street. Nor have I ever spent any amount of time asleep in my truck. Daytime, anyways. I have to plead the 5th about plowing snow at nights, after already putting in an 8 hour day . Sometimes all you can do is pull over and get 10-15 minutes of shuteye to make it to dawn. Since we don�t take breaks or lunch hours at night, closing my eyes while parked (as opposed to while driving down the road) for a short stretch seems only fair. I guess I just have to hope that the head of N.D.D.O.T. never pulls up behind my truck at 3 am�. I finally figured out what to do with the bucket full of tomatoes. It wasn�t until about 2 pm before I did, though. I made pasta (spaghetti) sauce. I don�t make this product every year, for several reasons: 1. Since I don�t use a pressure canner, I can�t put the finished product on the shelves of my pantry. The ph is just too low, and adding enough lemon juice to bring it where it belongs would make for a funky tasting sauce. 2.I have to freeze it, which means I also have to think about defrosting a jar several days before it�s needed. A giant tomato Popsicle doesn�t thaw well in the microwave. 3.Many of the newer canned sauces are very tasty (Bertolli� makes several good varieties, and so does Clasico�, which is packed in real Mason� jars which I reuse), and only set you back around $2 jar. Hard to justify all the work involved to make it at home. 4.Finally- I have made some pretty lousy tasting batches. Getting the salt/sugar/spices just right is tricky (much harder than making salsa, for instance). And usually the end product is still a little thin, even after cooking it down for a couple of hours. I tried using cornstarch as a thickening agent, but it ended up making the sauce pasty (I thought so, anyway). Yesterday, I found a few ideas at canning sites to make a better sauce. I tried one idea that seemed to come up every so often (in recipes submitted by others)- adding canned tomato paste to thicken the sauce. I reduced the sauce from 10 quarts (at the start) to just under , to just under 8 after an hour of slow boil. I then added 3 small cans of tomato paste (Contadina�, for those keeping score at home). How did it turn out? Much better than usual, thickness wise. The taste isn�t bad, either. Here is all but one quart, cooling on the rack downstairs:
The other quart is simmering in a small pot, waiting to be poured over some storebought ravioli (once Lease gets home from the hairdresser). If you counted the jars, you are probably thinking �that adds up to 9 quarts, counting the 2 pints as one quart. You said it made 8 quarts. Can�t you add, highway maintainer boy?� Yeah I know- nobody thought that. Just trying to make a point. Each jar is only filled about � of the way to the top. This is to give the sauce room to expand, therefore avoiding the problem of bursting jars in the freezer. I learned this lesson the hard way, many years ago�.
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