how to make tomato sauce (the easy way)

1) respond with an unequivocal "maybe" when your husband asks if he should bring home extra tomatoes from work to make into sauce.  add that he is welcome to make the sauce, should inspiration strike, but that your own personal interest in the project is extremely limited.

2) watch your husband carry in a large plastic tub of organic tomatoes from work that would otherwise have "gone to waste".

3) watch afore-mentioned husband wash and quarter tomatoes; offer tips as necessary.

4) prepare supper while tomatoes cook in large stockpot on the stove.  mention to husband the possibility of tomatoes scorching.

5) when supper is over and husband starts to look for the strainer gizmo, point him in the right direction, then go out to the hammock to read while he assembles it.

6) come back inside in time to watch Spice ladle the last of the cooked tomatoes into the strainer's hopper as husband tilts the strainer so that it doesn't spill onto the floor, Everything Nice pokes at the garbage end helpfully with the masher thing, and Sugar entertains Lil' Snip in the livingroom by crashing him onto the sofa with her.

7) wow the family by pouring the resulting tomato juice into two dutch ovens without spilling any of it.

8) volunteer to (wo-)man the sauce as it cooks down so that husband is free to clean up the strainer gizmo.

9) stir the sauce while reading personality books and watching husband in peripheral vision.

10) agree with husband that making sauce is a lot more involved than it appears.

11) get husband to take over stirring before your arm falls off and you expire from boredom on the pretext of making room in the refrigerator for the (hopefully single, eventually) pan of sauce.

12) thank husband for stirring, acknowledge his astute comment about the dullness inherent in the task of stirring, and set dutch ovens of sauce on trivets to cool on the table.

13) read more personality books.

14) announce that you're going to bed, then discover the two dutch ovens of sauce still cooling on the table.

15) pour sauce into a single dutch oven and place on trivet in the refrigerator.

16) wash out the other dutch oven before the ring of tomato "paste" hardens into tomato candy.

17) get ready for bed.

18) just before you get into bed, get the brilliant idea to write the whole sauce-making process down for the benefit of (wo-)mankind everywhere.

19) go to bed, windows open to admit cool post-hurricane autumnal breezes & the songs of crickets . . . .

20) make the mistake of sharing your brilliant post with husband, thereby giving him the opportunity (which he cannot pass up, due to his phlegmatic personality) to remark, "yeah, you weren't much help."

21) remind husband of step 1), add his compliments to your post and go back to bed.

[22) let husband read post to check for any inadvertent husband-bashing.  be pleased when he laughs.]