Tomato delight

This past Thursday Bobbie bought four bushels of tomatoes to cook down into sauce and can. After a lot of work and almost a week, the kitchen is back to normal. The benefit will be the great tasting sauce that we will be enjoying well into 2010.

The first step in the process is washing the crop. This is only the first of many in the sink.


The next step is to cook down the tomatoes using a specific sauce recipe. These are the first of a few pots of Summer Sauce. Later, Bobbie made simply reduced, cooked tomatoes. We will add the seasonings later.

A few years ago we found an Italian made food mill on a close-out table for about $25. It is a clever device that separates the tomato seeds and skins from the tasty pulp. Here's John cranking through the cooked mixture. Janine is monitoring the output of liquid and tomato paste on the other side.

At this point everything is far too diluted. So it all goes in to cook down to reduce the liquid content.

Finally, Bobbie adds a dash of white wine vinegar and cans everything. One by one you can hear the lids pop down as they cool.

I will print labels to keep them all in order. Finally we will put all in the basement pantry for storage. Look for an update this winter when we crack open a jar for spaghetti.