Gardening Intervention

[hosspak]

I need a gardening intervention too. The next time I plant 20 tomato plants I want a bunch of people who really care for me to stop me beforehand. I've got so many tomatoes I'm taking them into work. Some people took them at first but then they just sat there in the break room. Then I started taking them around in Wal-Mart plastic bags and leaving them in people's seats when they were away from their desks. That worked for a while but then they just started dumping them on my desk. Now if I walk outside when I go leave work to go home they've 'egged' my car with tomatoes...

Maybe it's time to start canning... It takes less effort to cook up your favorite sauce and then can a bunch of it some that you can enjoy all of your tomatoes throughout the year...Or you could wash and freeze them, then drop them at my house and I will turn them into sauce. lol

 

[JimWWhite]

I believe Teresa's going to do that this coming weekend. I know she'll take the Romas and she'll dehydrate them in her Excalibur dehydrator and then seal them up and probably freeze them. The Early Girls and what else we're getting now will probably just go into quart jars and into the pressure canner or a hot bath.

 

[hosspak]

Update from the Crazy H-Bar Ranch;
Out of the garden and into the kitchen.... Again! So, today we finally took the 20 lbs of garden tomatoes from the freezer and added those to the 5 lbs of romas and 8 lbs large tomatoes. It took 3 hours to blanch, peel and pureed them. We saved about 2 lbs of romas and just diced them up. We browned 2 lbs of lean ground beef and 2 lbs italian sausage and sauteed onions and garlic. Tomorrow we will cook it up. At the last minute we will add diced red and yellow onions, red and green peppers and some lemon basil and purple basil (all from the garden). I can't wait, because the house will smell amazing. Should get about 15ish pints...

So, maybe I underestimated a little but we got 26 pints plus 1 quart jar of sauce. And it tastes wonderful....

Oh and with the humidity at 99.9%, yeah it's a little damp!

 

[baymule]

Well, you know what they say......if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen! Which is what I bet you are doing now--with a nice cold drink!

Great job on the tomatoes. Doesn't it make you feel good to look at all those pretty jars? What did you use to puree the tomatoes?

 

[hosspak]

Well, you know what they say......if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen! Which is what I bet you are doing now--with a nice cold drink!

Great job on the tomatoes. Doesn't it make you feel good to look at all those pretty jars? What did you use to puree the tomatoes?

You are so right... That sauce was cooking from 10am to 6pm, trying to get it to cook down and thicken up. The level in that pan dropped 2 inches from where it started and is still a little thin for me.

While we were blanching and peeling, I was tossing some in the blender. I kept out about 25% of the tomatoes and just diced into quarters so it would still be chunky.

 

[ninnymary]

That must be hot canning with all that humidty! Yikes, can't imagine that.

Mary

 

[baymule]

You need one of these;

I've had mine forever, but you can find them on ebay for $15 to $25. I cook the tomatoes, then strain them and mash them with the mallet. No blanching and peeling! This works if you want juice or sauce, but not for chunks!

 

[hosspak]

You need one of these;

View attachment 3815

I've had mine forever, but you can find them on ebay for $15 to $25. I cook the tomatoes, then strain them and mash them with the mallet. No blanching and peeling! This works if you want juice or sauce, but not for chunks!

My elbow aches just looking at that thang! lol We have a big juicer top of the line machine but I hate cleaning it (I meant to say, my wife hates to clean it for me) But we lose the pulpyness with that. This time I forgot to sqeeze the excess water and seeds out before I blended them so I had to cook it down a while. Another thing different this time we didn't use cans of tomato paste as we have done in the past. This was all from scratch... maybe not again next time. lol

 

[journey11]

That's a good day's work you've done there, @hosspak . Boy, it does take forever to get it simmered down. I made a note in my BBB years ago to start the tomato sauce first and then move on to something else. Simmering it in multiple large pans or even a deep skillet would reduce it faster...more surface area for the steam to evaporate from.

I bought a Roma food strainer last year for tomatoes and blackberries and such. It's like a Squeezo, but not all metal. (A Squeezo is more expensive, but still be well worth it. The Roma dropped $20 in price since I bought mine too.) The one I have does great work churning out tomato sauce and salsa (different screen accessory) really fast, no need to blanch and peel. I hate blanching and peeling, ha. It takes longer to clean it than it does to make sauce. We decided we liked the consistency of the salsa better than doing it all by hand too. But you could still add in some chunks like you did with yours.

 

[hosspak]

That's a good day's work you've done there, @hosspak . Boy, it does take forever to get it simmered down. I made a note in my BBB years ago to start the tomato sauce first and then move on to something else. Simmering it in multiple large pans or even a deep skillet would reduce it faster...more surface area for the steam to evaporate from.

I bought a Roma food strainer last year for tomatoes and blackberries and such. It's like a Squeezo, but not all metal. (A Squeezo is more expensive, but still be well worth it. The Roma dropped $20 in price since I bought mine too.) The one I have does great work churning out tomato sauce and salsa (different screen accessory) really fast, no need to blanch and peel. I hate blanching and peeling, ha. It takes longer to clean it than it does to make sauce. We decided we liked the consistency of the salsa better than doing it all by hand too. But you could still add in some chunks like you did with yours.

I guess I can think of it as a stationary bike while I'm saucing stuff. lol Now I need to figure out how to save the seeds of my heirloom tomatoes... I'm starting to save my pepper seeds...