why not use up whatever is left in your end-of-season vegetable garden to whip up your very own zesty condisauce?

Condisauce: When a condiment can also be used as a sauce or a sauce used as a condiment it is refered to as condisauce. Condisauce: When you make or purchase a condiment and you find it can be used in larger amounts and be cooked in a dish with meat, poultry and fish OR when you make or purchase a sauce and realise it works equally well cold as a condiment for burgers and sandwiches. Another way of saying source: Condiment. Sauce. Dressing. Marinade. Cooking.

It’s fall but there are still some days that feel like summer. Which is why, when you look at your pitiful end of the season vegetable garden, you’re still a tad hopeful that those green tomatoes will turn red, that you have plenty of time to bring the basil plant indoors and that you will find the desire (soon) to pickle those hot peppers that decided to grow in all at the same time.

Except I know from experience that those tomatoes will in fact, stay green, that the basil will die and turn black at the very first sign of frost and that the hot peppers will end up rotting in the crisper when you’re kids catch on that you’ve been trying to sneak them into e-v-e-r-y meal.

Here is one solution for your leftover garden garbage;

Garden Garbage Condisauce:

1. Gather up the cracked, nasty or bruised red tomatoes, the green unripened ones, a fist-full of herbs and some hot peppers.
2. Give them a quick wash, take off the stems and throw them in a huge pot on the stove.
3. Pour enough water to almost cover the vegetables. Feel free to throw in a little salt, an onion or two, some garlic, even a couple of old carrots that you accidentally just discovered were growing into your oregano.
4. Bring to a boil, then reduce temperature to low and allow to simmer for 20 minutes or until all veggies are soft.
5. Using your immersion blender, blend together until the consistency is smooth and pureed (looks like baby food).
6. Pour some into condiment bottles to squeeze on your burgers and sandwiches then store the rest in air tight containers in the fridge or freezer to be used in cooking. (Example: last week I threw skinned and d-boned chicken thighs into the crock pot with 4 cups of this sauce. I let it cook all day and added in a little heavy cream about 20 minutes before serving over rice = YUM!).

Use as dressing on hamburgers, a marinade for grilled pork chops or the base of a great sauce!

If you already cleaned up, composted or threw away you garden’s garbage don’t feel bad -just pin, bookmark, print or save this post for next year ;-)

By the way, in case you’re wondering, condisauce is almost, sort of, a real word. I made a submission today to Urban Dictionary.com (can you believe no one had done that yet?) and to my surprise a couple of hours later I got an email back, no joke:

“Thanks for your definition of condisauce! Editors reviewed your entry and have decided to publish it on urbandictionary.com. It should appear on this page in the next few days: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=condisauce Urban Dictionary”

Created a blog, check. Invented a word, check. Next, the Pulitzer Prize …LOL! ;-)

-Julie