Tonight I'm working on homemade spaghetti sauce. This is a first for me, but some friends offered us their extra tomatoes and I just can't let them go to waste. I picked 2 full 5-gallon buckets of the gorgeous fruit; a combination of Beefsteak and Roma varieties. They planted 6 just as we had, but ours didn't fare well at all, while theirs were just loaded down with tomatoes, the plants as tall as me. Awesome!
Anyhow, my uncle and I got to talking about canning last week and he dropped off a tomato strainer for me to try. I'd never seen, let alone used one before...well let me tell you it is AMAZING. I put the whole tomatoes into a pan of hot water for just a couple minutes, then into cold water in the sink. Then one by one dropped them into the top of the strainer...all the while turning (or having the kids turn) the crank. The juice and pulp came out one shoot, while the seeds and skins dropped out the back. It was the cleanest process for seperating the seeds/skins that I'd ever seen! It made beautiful slushy tomato juice that probably could have been canned as is without any further doctoring, but I've opted to make pasta sauce instead. I'm using Mrs. Wages pasta sauce seasoning packets, which smells wonderful as it simmers. The sauce is a bit runny though, and everything I've read online suggests just letting it simmer to get rid of the water, for as long as 10-12 hours. So, it looks as though I'll be canning in the morning as opposed to this evening yet. Darn it...I'm in the mood. But, as I said, it smells divine, and will be worth it to have a nice thick sauce to can in the morning. I can hardly wait to try it...the tomatoes, garlic, oregano, peppers & onions all blended and permeating the whole house now. Yumm!
