Thanks for the comments...... We ended up with a house full of people last year. Probably 40-50. I made 200 nice sized meatballs and we had 13 left. Everyone brought there kids over. It was a good night.
As far as gardening tips, I think the thing that makes our garden go crazy every year is our compost we accumulate. All kitchen waste, yard waste and some newspaper goes in it. I had the compost pile started for years before we actually started our garden. So we've had plenty of good compost soil to use the past few years. This year we covered the entire garden with a 3 inch layer of compost and then tilled it for hours. We probably tilled to a depth of 12 inches which also really helped all the plants get a good start on life.
Here's my simple recipe I use for marinara sauce. This is the way we used to make marinara in an authentic Italian restaurant I used to work at. Its a great base to use for lots of different dishes.
Recipe for marinara
90 lbs fresh tomatoes
2 lbs fresh basil - washed and chiffonade
5 lbs onions - fine diced
as much garlic as you can stand to peel
sea salt
pepper
Blanch tomatoes in boiling H2O for 30 sec. Immediately put in ice bath to cool. Peel skins off, cut in half and squeeze out the seeds. Put all the tomatoes, onions, garlic and HALF the basil in large brew pot. Slow simmer it for 1 hour. Cool with wort chiller (this worked awesome.....it was cool in about 1/2 hour). Add the remaining basil to cooled marinara. Invite 50 of your closest friends over for pasta......enjoy!
The pics are of spaghetti night last year and this years garden. There were 3 pans like this full of meatballs.......damn they were good.