Yesterday I finally processed the tomatoes. Let me back up. I’d planned to do it over the weekend but needed some time off from the solar cooking demo work. You knew that already. What you didn’t know is that we headed out to a mesquite tasting held by the Desert Harvesters Saturday evening. They are putting together a mesquite cookbook and wanted people to sample and rate the recipes. There were a number of very tasty products, including crackers, cookies, muffins, and even ice cream made with mesquite. Unfortunately, something I ate that evening triggered my vertigo by the early morning hours and I was not up to canning or much of anything else on Sunday.
It didn’t help that Polie decided to do crazy runs in the house and ran over my toe. I don’t know if it’s broken but it sure turned black & blue and hurt when I walked. I haven’t bothered going to the doctor since not much can be done with a broken toe except staying off of it.
This is two days later. How am I supposed to stay off my feet to process a flat of tomatoes? Huh? Would someone tell me that. And while you're at, tell me why we adopted a new dog that eats more than Angel, sheds three times as much as her, and demands four times as much attention. What is up with that?!So, anyway I planned to do the tomatoes on Monday. When I woke up and noticed what a mess the house was, I wanted to get it straightened up first. That took far longer than expected. Then Angel threw up on the carpet and that clean-up took another hour. I still needed to run a couple of errands and by that time I definitely needed a break. I had a late but relaxing and healthy lunch at Sweet Tomatoes (salad bar & buffet). By the time I got home, it was after 3 pm but I figured I could get the BBQ sauce done in a few hours.
Ha! HA! There were two big problems with this plan. I had not read the recipe closely so had not noticed all the cooking times: 30 minutes to soften veggies, 45 minutes to reduce, an hour to make the magical transition into BBQ sauce, and 40 minutes to can. The other problem was I decided it was time to try out two different food mills I’d picked up in thrift stores.
This one did not work for the fresh tomatoes at all. I’m very disappointed but it explains why so many show up in the thrift stores.
My Italian mill worked fine, once we figured out how to get it set up. For some reason, though, it leaves a lot of flesh on the tomato skin it extrudes.
After processing the tomatoes through the mill above, I put the extruded parts through my Chinois food mill and got plenty of pulp and juice to make jam.Earlier in the day, it crossed my mind that I should chop the vegetables needed for the BBQ sauce ahead of time. Did I do that? No, of course not. Finally, though, I got everything simmering. After half an hour, all had to be blended before reducing. The 45 minute reduction actually took more like an hour and a half. No worries, we watched the ‘B’ movie on TV about a meteor hitting the moon. It wasn't great but I had to get up every 5 minutes to stir the sauce anyway.
Eventually, the vinegar, sugar and seasonings made their way into the pot and the final hour of simmering was underway. The hour was getting late. My sweetie abandoned me for the siren song of his pillow. I settled down with a crossword puzzle. After that hour came 40 minutes in the water bath canner. Would I never get to bed?!
This is what time I fished the jars out of the canner. This recipe took me almost 7 (SEVEN!) hours to complete from start to finish. All for 5 pints of BBQ sauce.
This had better be some damn good sauce.
It started all over this morning with eggplant tomato relish. With the peeling and chopping of eggplant, tomatoes, onions, and peppers, and then another hour long simmer, I’ve just now finished canning the relish. I’m taking a break now before two more recipes.
The first will be the tomato jam made from the leftover tomato puree. Thanks to a couple of suggestions in the comments, I’ve decided to make jalapeno-tomato jam. I have a jalapeno leftover from the BBQ sauce so I put together this recipe from several others online. Don’t worry, I did not alter the proportion of lemon juice to vegetables. I have no intention of poisoning myself.Jalapeno Tomato Jam
4 cups fresh tomato puree
1 large jalapeno, seeded and roughly chopped
1/3 cup vinegar
1/4 c lemon juice
5 c sugar
1 box dry pectin
Sterilize canning jars & lids.
Puree jalapeno in food processor with vinegar.
Pour tomato and jalapeno purees into large saucepan. Simmer 10 minutes, stirring often to prevent burning. Measure 3 cups into clean saucepan.
Add lemon juice. Mix well.
Stir pectin into tomatoes. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly.
Dump all sugar in at once. Stir and bring to a full rolling boil that can’t be stirred down.
Boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat. Skim off foam.
Pour into sterilized hot jars, leaving ¼” headspace.
Wipe rims, put on lids.
Process in boiling water bath for 5 min at sea level; 10 min from 1000-6000 feet.
Makes 6 half-pint jars.
Finally, with the few tomatoes left after all this, I will combine them with other leftover vegetables from the CSA and the store to make a stupendous spaghetti sauce for dinner. It will have eggplants, celery, onion, and green pepper in it, as well as some of my frozen basil-tomato puree and some fresh oregano.
I’m already hungry thinking about dinner or is it just because I never got around to eating breakfast this morning?
12 comments:
Wow - I'm tired just reading your post! I promise never to complain about outrageous prices for yummy stuff like that at Farmers' Markets! How's your toe feeling after all that?
Seems like we're on the same path this week. Enjoy those 'maters!
My boyfriend had that Endurance Food Mill and I couldn't get it to work for me either. It would just kind of mush things, but nothing would go through it. I thought maybe it's for something that's already been cooked for a while and is very soft... We recycled it.
Your tomatoes sound as bad as my apples :)
Sorry about your toe. I did that to my sister with the back of a chair. We were moving my mum at the time and it WAS an accident. She just rested it for a while - nothing else you can do.
viv in nz
Your toe- Do what my grandm used to do and set up your equiptment on the table and sit there and do it. or get a wheelchair-
Your Jam- looks good
My first jam will probably be strawberry this year while waiting on those damn plums to get gold and juicy!
That is a broken toe! The only thing you can do is tape it to the adjoining toe. Having been through the same thing, that's all the doctor did for me.
The 'maters look great! We can get 25 pound boxes of overripe "canning" tomatoes at the farmers' market, sometimes for as little as five bucks (but they are not organic). I have an Italian mill as well. I put the skins back thru a second time to get the remaining good bits. Then I'm just left with skin and seeds.
Re the toe: surprisingly the standing did not seem to hurt the toe much. It didn't really feel much of anything unless I touched it.
That is, until this morning when I knocked a small glass bottle of Neem off a cabinet shelf. Wouldn't you know it would fall directly on the middle of that toe?! OOOOOWWWWW!
I did try working at a table a few nights back but the height is wrong. I probably should have used a different chair. Some things can be done at a table but others are too messy and we only have a heavy cardboard folding table available.
By the way, be sure and check back for new pics of the jam and spaghetti sauce at the end of the post.
Ouch, for the toe! Amazing, for the food!
Sometimes it does seem like the time to process is not worth it, I totally commiserate! And my jams always seem to cook down more and produce less than the recipe promised. Grrr. But I bet it IS some darn good barbecue sauce you made :)
Next time, if you don't have time for processing all your tomatoes, try dehydrating them -- I only just finished the last of ours from last summer. It's much less work. And you can use a solar deydrator made out of cardboard boxes, too, if you like. They were so tasty, and I didn't have to buy tomatoes all winter, just 6 cans of crushed tomatoes for when we craved a more saucy dinner.
Your poor toe! I have to say that those types of time frames (standing on my hard kitchen floor for 8 hours at a time) have discouraged me from canning as much as I otherwise might. I've turned to freezer jam (made in the bread machine, then frozen) instead of full-on canning for just that reason. Your sauce looks delicious, though!
I just got a hanging solar dehydrator that I plan to try out soon...as soon as the clouds roll out. LOL
Luckily, this wasn't 7 straight hours of standing. Things get put together to simmer and then only have to be stirred every now and then. When the water bath is boiling, it doesn't have to be watched. No, I couldn't do the entire day on my feet either!
I don't have the same kind of tomato mill but I run the skin/seeds through twice and they come out dry- no pulp. Still waiting for ripe tomatoes up here in the Great White North. Take care of the toe.
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