Re: I'm Sick of Tomatoes

[James Mayer]

I've been harvesting tomatoes for a couple of weeks now. I tried to keep

>up and eat as much as I can and also give away a lot but the tomatoes >keep coming and coming every day. Now the thought of eating another >tomato turns my stomach. > >Does anyone have good tips on freezing these? My parent's put them in >boiling water for a couple of minutes and then peel the skins, smash them >up, and put them in ziplock bags to freeze. That seemed a little too >much work for me so I just cut them up, put them in a blender, liquefied >them, and put them in ziplock bags. Since my liquefied tomatoes >contained skins I'm not sure how this is going to taste when I thaw them >in the winter for chili. I also have a lot of basil and one bag I >experimented by throwing some basil in the blender with the tomatoes. >I'm not sure how this is going to taste either. > >These tomato plants were so much work I don't want to waste any of the >tomatoes but it's going to be a couple of months before I'll be able to >eat one again. >

Can them whole, can them as juice, can them as spaghetti sauce, can them as chili sauce, but just can them. I remember one summer my mother and I went through about 12 bushel of tomatoes, canning them in one form or another. We were using any jar that we could dig up that would accept a mason lid or a clamp-down rubber ring. We canned more produce that year than we could eat in the whole next year. If we found some jars, we'd find something to put in them. Can those tomatoes, for next year your crop may not come in at all.

[Milt]

Fried green tomatoes is right nice! Also... Canning is great for tomatoes, make salsa, or V-8 juice, or tomato juice, or even better here is a link to a wine recipe that won two first place ribbons in competitions. They are too good to waste!

[---Pete---]

------ I freeze lots of cherry tomatoes. Just rinse them and freeze them. I use them in sandwiches throughout the year by partially thawing and then flattening them using the blade of my chef's knife.

I also get many pounds of tomatoes as you described and process them in about 5 to 10 pound batches where I'll liquify them using the blender as you described. Then what I'll do is strain them to remove the seeds and large bits of skin. I store the liquified tomatoes in the refrig until I get about 15 cups of liquified tomatoes that I'll cook to make spaghetti sauce and pizza sauce. I do the same thing by cooking some Chili and freezing it. Each batch of spaghetti sauce I cook typicaly includes about 6 pounds of beefcubes/meatballs/sausage that I also freeze.

I freeze the cooked sauces and store them in those plastic containers that measure about 10" by 6" by 2". When I need sauce throughout the year, I place the frozen block on my cutting board and use an ice pick to put a few dimples in a straight line across the block then I drive the pick all the way through in the center and the piece I need breaks off cleanly. Actually quite easy to do this. You can always get just the right amount you need for any meal, large or small.

One other thing I do with all this cooked sauce is I'll make a huge batch of Lasagna and cut it into meal sized pieces and freeze it in plastic containers.

Sure, all the above is lots of work but it really pays off throughout the year when you can put together great meals in very short time using the frozen goods. Using my frozen goods, I can put together a meal of chii in about 3 minutes. I can put together a meal of pasta & meat using my frozen spaghetti sauce & frozen meats in about 15 minutes.

I also make lots of pizza pies throughout the year with my frozen pizza sauce but that is a whole story in itself.

---pete---

[Noydb]

I enjoy fresh tomatoes from the garden but I have also learned to can them. It's not difficult to do but if you are balking at peeling and then freezing them, I suspect it would be best if you only planted one or two vines next year.

My wife and I look forward to canning as much tomato juice as we possibly can because we really like tomato juice and the stuff that comes from the store is best used for washing dogs who offended skunks. It is certainly not fit for human consumption. Last year we put away 44 qts of juice and were out of it before February. This year I am shooting for ~100 qts. (14 -

15 canner loads x 7 qts/load).

I should have a powered Victorio food mill coming tomorrow. The hand mill takes just too much time for the amount of produce we process and the amount of 'spare' time we have available. We both work and are very active in our religion and it's tough to peel more time out of an evening than the hour or so it takes to get a load through the canner.

We have 41 qts of dill pickles (and counting), 9 pints of a very tasty salsa, 40 1/2 pints of strawberry jam, some dried herbs (dill, oregano, 3 kinds of mint,chamomille, sage), 4 pints dilled green beans, perhaps 20 pounds of garlic and 80 pounds of onions and are only 'getting started' with the season.

Although we certainly save money by putting food away, we find that we derive our greatest pleasure from the variety of tastes we get from our own garden that we simply can't buy in the local stores.

When you open yourself to preserving food, you open the door to flavors you never knew existed ... good flavors that make no apologies.

Bill

[B & M Chick]

Hi there, Have you thought of maybe canning your tomatoes? It is really easy. You can add onions, bell peppers and garlic to the tomatoes then can them also. If not, you could always send them to me!

[J. Lane]

I've frozen the suckers whole, in zip lock bags. Just wash and freeze! When I need tomatoes for a recipie, I take a bag out, put the frozen tomatoes, sans bag, into a collander and run hot water over them. The skin peels right off and you can use them whole or cut them while frozen. Only problem I had was chasing those slippery frozen balls around on my cutting board! Boy can they slide.

[Pat Meadows]

I was surprised how good the home-dried tomato slices taste

- quite a few of ours got eaten quickly too.

Pat

[Marcella Tracy Peek]

Wash, dry, place in zip lock bag and put in freezer. Pull them out to use as you need them. The skins slide right off when they thaw. You can toss them in soups and sauces to get a nice fresh tomato flavor all winter.

We dry a lot of ours, but then, we have a dehydrator. Anyone got one you can borrow?

Donate to the local food bank?

marcella

[Pam]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 17:11:17 -0500,since it's all about me Mark Anderson professed:

Bastard!

Pam, coming off two years of The War of the Thrips and their WMD, Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus.

[Bill Bolle]

This is exactly what I have done for years. A LOT better, easier and cheaper than canning.

Bill

[Andy Petro]

What is your recipe for dill pickles.

Noydb wrote:

[Glenna Rose]

Yup. Kinda like having your own chickens and eating real eggs. :-)

Glenna who forgot what real eggs tasted like until last September when the ladies came to live here

[Glenna Rose]

Question of safety here. When you add the bell peppers, don't they then have to be pressure canned?

Curious.

Glenna

[Frogleg]

I got a terrific rash one summer from too many tomatoes. :-)

One of the processes of nature that seems ill-conceived is that all those lovely tomatoes come ripe at *just* the season one doesn't want to be boiling and simmering and processing. Much nicer to have a bucket of 'garden fresh' tomatoes in December when one could really enjoy a warm kitchen with fragrant pasta sauce simmering on the stove.

And blenderized seeds? Ick.

It may be a bit more trouble, but if you simply chunk up the tomatoes, cook them a bit to soften, and put through a food mill, seeds and skins will be left behind, and you'll have a sort of tomato puree base to freeze. I picked this up from a Jacques Pepin show. The cooking was

*very* brief -- 5 minutes or so in a large shallow pan. I believe he first sauted some onions and garlic in a little olive oil before throwing the tomato chunks in. If you're thinking of a chile base, this would be a good addition. When it's chile time, thaw, and cook to reduce, or not.

The point is that this method filters out seeds and skin fairly easily (I *have* done it, and it works), and doesn't take a day's labor doing that 'peel, (de-) seed, chop' thing.

[Pat Meadows]

Yes, they do.

Pat

[Noydb]

It would seem to depend on the quantity added. If just a tablespoon or so for seasoning, I wouldn't think so. I base that on the observation that such like can be canned up in tomato juice and the amount of added acid is not increased in the 'official' recipes. I suspect that the two tablespoons of lemon juice per qt advice actually errs on the side of too much acid to avoid errors on the side of too little.

Moreover, both the garlic and the onions contribute antibacterial qualities when fresh. I don't know if they are destroyed by heat or not but even if they are, they are fresh when added to the puree and would help disinfect it chemically before the heat disinfection of boiling took over.

Bill