Tomato Wisdom

I don’t know about your house, but it is high tomato season at my house. We are virtually drowning in the sensous rosy red fruit (although some of our heirloom varieties are pink, yellow, orange, and my favorite – rainbow). So far, I've canned 27 pints of salsa, 24 quarts of tomato sauce, 18 pints of diced tomatoes, and 16 pints of pizza sauce. And still the tomatoes ripen. There’s no time to write while the sun is shining, so here’s five little nuggets of wisdom I’ve gleaned from the tomatoes this year:

 

1. You don’t have to do things the way everyone else does it. You don’t have to peel the tomatoes. If you’re making puree or pizza sauce, or even tomato sauce, just clean them super well, core and seed them, and run them through the food processor until they are liquefied. Skipping all that peeling saves endless time.
2. You don’t have to stick to your plan. Use up the most ripe tomatoes first. Let go of your best laid plans and use up the over-ripe mortgage lifters first if the Amish paste tomatoes are still firm. Once a couple tomatoes start to rot in your containers, the fruit flies and ungodly stench descend. Get to work.
3. Sometimes it’s best to put off until tomorrow what you really can’t do today.  If you don’t have time and you are overrun with tomatoes, clean them really well and put them in plastic bags in your freezer. If they're destined to be sauce anyway, freezing them won’t hurt –promise. You can can at Christmas if you want. Or use them as you need them, provided you have the space to store them in the freezer. Our cow arrived a few weeks ago, so all the space in our freezer is spoken for.
4. Cheating is permitted when there’s nothing at stake except your sanity. You can stretch out your work time by refrigerating your tomatoes. We’ve had them wait two weeks on us with very little loss by picking and putting them directly in the fridge.
5. Even when you’re busy, it’s important to feed your children well. Plant cherry tomatoes and when your kids are hungry for a snack, send them to eat directly off the plant – saves time, dishes, and money!

Using the deep fryer base to can outside. Water heats faster and it keeps the heat out of the kitchen.

Fresh Tomato Sauce for the Lazy Cook

I have always believed that the way to make real tomato sauce is to slowly cook fresh peeled tomatoes, sautéed peppers and onions, plus fresh minced herbs, while channeling an Italian grandmother and sipping a glass of red wine. This past week I discovered there’s a much simpler, lazier way.

Summer has been trolling along in a very unproductive way for me. I’ve barely kept up with the weeds, my running mileage is way down on account of the fact that I hate running when it’s hot and humid (and it’s been six-bajillion degrees and balmy for two months now), and you’ve probably noticed I’ve been neglecting my blogs a bit. No excuses really, just enjoying my kids, my family, my friends, and my air-conditioning. 

So, back to my discovery. In a moment of guilt, I decided that I needed to get my act together and plan some menus so that our dinners would no longer be a mad scramble or a everyone-fend-for-yourself affair as has been most of our meals this summer. I planned pasta with fresh spaghetti sauce for Thursday because our tomatoes are just starting to ripen. Great idea, problem was that I got distracted by a writing deadline, laundry caught on the line in a sudden thunderstorm, and my elderly dog who was struggling more than usual. These were all things that honestly necessitated my attention.  

It was 5:30 when I had time to get dinner going, and we had to be out the door for a kid-activity by 6:30. No time for fresh sauce. Or was there? 

I picked six beautiful tomatoes and decided I didn’t have time to peel them, so I simply cored and seeded them and threw them in the food processor. I processed the tomatoes until no more skins were evident (children are opposed to skins on most fruits and veggies).

I pulled out an onion and pepper and ran to the barn for some garlic cloves that I’d left to drying along with my plans to braid them by their green stalks like I saw on a farm visit last season. (It’s too late now, I discovered as the green stalks are brown and crispy as fallen twigs, alas, maybe next year).  

There wasn’t time to sauté the veggies, so I threw all of them in the food processor along with a handful of fresh basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, sage, and a tiny bit of tarragon. I processed this mess until it was an unrecognizable brownish mass that looked a bit like dog barf. (see pic) I suppose I could have chopped them finely, but that would require a longer cook time and my kids tend to turn their noses up at recognizable vegetables. 

I threw the red and brown purees in a pot on the stove with some salt, pepper, and a can of tomato paste (for thickening) and ten minutes later I had delicious fresh sauce! Really it was beyond yum. The only complaint at dinner came from my oldest who said the sauce was too sweet! Can’t believe I’ve wasted so many hours of my life peeling tomatoes and cooking down my pasta sauce! I think all those Italian grandmas just wanted an excuse to hang out in the kitchen.

I plan to experiment next time by adding some red wine, more garlic, and maybe one of my flavored olive or grapeseed oils. Now that I know it isn’t an all afternoon commitment, I’ll be brewing up fresh sauce on a regular basis.

Top Ten Reasons We Can

I had a hot date with my hubby last night. It got pretty steamy and altogether messy. We canned tomatoes until the wee hours. It’s that time of year. Twenty pints of pizza sauce and nine quarts of tomato sauce. And still the tomatoes keep coming.

We’re taking a break and moving on to peaches today. Bought a huge bushel of seconds peaches ready and ripe. This weekend’s date will involve skinning the luscious beauties and squeezing the pits out of them before we cook them in to peachsauce (just like applesauce only peaches and no sugar!), peach Barbeque sauce, and maybe some peach jam or syrup. It will definitely get sticky.

Canning can be a solitary endeavor, but it’s much more fun with company and music (and some wine). Sometimes when I’m elbow deep in the mess I wonder why we do this. It would be so much easier to buy tomato sauce at the store. And even if the price of organic tomato sauce can be dear, I’m fairly sure my time is worth just as much.

Inspired by my son's excellent blog, How To Kill Your Characters, (It’s all manner of musings on Dungeons and Dragons on the surface, but underneath it’s pretty philosophical and just plain good writing. He puts me to shame.) which is filled with Top Ten Lists, I present:

The Top Ten Reasons why I can each summer:


1 Popping the lid off a jar of tomato sauce in the dead of winter returns summer if only for a meal. All the flavors of five different heirloom tomatoes in one jar is divine. No can from the store, no matter how exclusive and expensive the brand, can compare.


2 My youngest child considers homemade peachsauce such a special treat, he opts for it over all manner of junk food.


3 Instead of empty calories and chemicals in store bought pancake syrup, we slop on homemade blueberry syrup any time of year not just special occasions.


4 Once you grow accustomed to homemade applesauce it’s pretty much impossible to eat that mealy mush they sell at the grocery store.


5  I feel connected to my mother and grandmother and all the women before them as I “put up” healthy, homegrown food for my family.


6 I can’t stand to waste anything. And I can’t stick to one kind of tomato or cucumber. How else could I keep from throwing all the extras on the compost pile?


7 I like cherries, blueberries, and peaches too much to eat them only a few weeks a year and I can’t bring myself to buy (or pay the price for) produce shipped from the other side of the globe in the dead of winter.


8 It may consume my time in the summer, but it saves me time in shopping trips to the store the rest of the year. We always have sauces, fruits, veggies, and jams on hand year round.


9 I get incredible nerdy satisfaction from hearing the jar lids “pop”, writing the contents on the lids, and lining them up neatly on the shelf.


10 It’s one tiny step I can take toward living more self-sufficiently. If I had my way we’d live off the grid on the side of mountain, but thankfully (for my kids at least), I married a man who enjoys the marvels of modern conveniences. Although he makes a damn fine lumberjack, I must say.

I hope you’re inspired to get canning yourself! If you need some tips or ideas check out some previous posts

Canning foibles, canning basics, canning tomatoes, applesauce , more canning ideas

Or locate a copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving – it will tell you everything you need to can anything. Canning isn’t rocket science, I promise. You can do this!

Tomato, Tomatoh, Don't Call the Whole Thing Off!

Tomato, Tomahto, this year I was tempted to call the whole thing off. Our tomatoes were a disaster thanks to the Tomato blight. Each year I can over a hundred jars of diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, pizza sauce, and salsa, enough to last us the year. This year that ain’t happening. Depressing is what it is. Last week I bought 25 pounds of tomatoes from a local farmer and did put up 11 jars of salsa and some pizza sauce. The tomatoes weren’t heirloom or organic, not even close to it, but store bought salsa isn’t homemade tasting or even close to it. Same goes for pizza sauce. So I spent a morning deep in tomatoes and that reminded me that even if I’m not canning tomatoes this year, that doesn’t mean other people aren’t.

The easiest way to can tomatoes is to simply slip off the skins, quarter and seed them and can them. Takes no time at all. Removing tomato skins is simple. Heat a pan of boiling water and plunk your tomatoes in for a minute. Remove them and put them in ice cold water. Now the skins are easily removed. The Ball Jar Book recommends scoring the bottom of the tomato with a little X before you place them in the boiling water to make the skins slip right off.

Tomatoes have a few other issues when it comes to handling them. Use only stainless steel pans. The acid in tomatoes can react with other types (copper, brass, aluminum, or iron) and then they sometimes taste really funky. I just learned recently that I shouldn’t be using my big wooden spoon to stir them either because the wood can absorb flavors. This discovery led me to wonder what else I don’t know about cooking tomatoes.

Since I’m not actually canning many tomatoes this year, I had a few moments to read about canning tomatoes. I was excited to learn the reason why my sauce sometimes comes out too runny no matter how long I boil it. It has to do with the enzymes that are released when you crush tomatoes. I feel like a scientist just talking about enzymes. The only thing I really know about enzymes are they get going when something sits around at room temperature for awhile (like yogurt) and they can do good things. They’re the reason dry aged meat tastes so great.

When tomatoes are cut or crushed, a natural enzyme is activated which causes the solid and liquids to separate. So if you’re canning you want to begin heating your tomatoes the moment you begin cutting or crushing them. I was excited by this knowledge, so I tested it out on a small batch of pizza sauce made from the tomatoes I bought from a local farmer. I skinned them, seeded them and put them through my food processor in small batches and immediately tossed them in to the pan to begin cooking. I think there was still too much lag time, but my pizza sauce came out much thicker than usual. I can’t wait to figure out how this will play out with my spaghetti sauce next year. Hopefully I’ll retain this knowledge until next tomato season!

One more point of reference on tomatoes. Lemon juice is always something I debate with myself over. Add it or don’t add it. This year a friend who had plenty of tomatoes called me when she was knee-deep in canning them and we debated the lemon juice issue at length. I thought if I kept her on the phone long enough, she might offer me the tomatoes just to end the conversation. No dice. Anyway, the question is do you or do you not have to add lemon juice to your diced tomatoes when canning them in a hot bath canner. I know, I know, it would have kept you on the edge of your seat I’m sure. Most references do tell you to put lemon juice in the jar before you add the tomatoes to ensure that the acidity is high enough to keep the tomatoes stable in the jar. So it’s probably a good idea. Having never done this, I had to take the other point and say that many homegrown, heirloom tomatoes may have plenty of acid and do just fine on their own. I’ve never had a jar go bad (knock on wood) and I’ve never added the lemon juice. And then we consulted several texts and decided that since we don’t have a lab that can test the acidity of our tomatoes (and I’m not truly certain what the correct number would be anyway), we should err on the side of caution and go with the juice. So now I’m a little paranoid, and I will probably add the lemon juice next year.

Amazing that I learned so much about canning tomatoes this year without canning very many. Maybe there was a reason I got the blight. Maybe the powers that be knew I didn’t know enough and I certainly didn’t have the time to can a hundred jars this year. Live and learn. That’s what it’s all about.