Processing tomatoes

Rather to our surprise, we've been having something of an Indian summer around here. If it's not raining -- and it's been raining a lot -- it's been fairly nice. Therefore the garden has managed to cling on longer than expected.

Last week, after several days of unremitting rain (note the full wheelbarrow below), we had a frost expected.

We had a light frost in mid-September that juuuuust passed us by but nailed the gardens of neighbors less than a mile away, so we've been taking our chances and letting the tomatoes continue to ripen. This time, however, I knew we wouldn't escape the frigid temps. Time to harvest tomatoes.

When harvesting tomatoes just before a killing frost, you don't just pick the ripe ones; you pick everything, and worry about ripening later.

We naïvely started with a single bucket.

Well that didn't last. Numerous buckets and tubs and wheelbarrows later, we finally had every tomato stripped. We also pulled the cayenne peppers and red bell peppers.

Sure enough, the next morning the tomatoes were dead; but the harvest was safe in the house.

After several days of tripping over all this bounty, I knew it was time to process the tomatoes before they went bad. So I set up my faithful Victorio food strainer and got to work.

Well, the more I cranked, the more the tomatoes seemed to multiply every time I blinked. I cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked and CRANKED and cranked. I cut and trimmed and sliced and cranked some more.

The two large bowls I optimistically hoped would hold all the purée quickly overflowed, so I scrubbed out a 4-gallon bucket and used that instead.

By the time I'd cranked my way through all the ripe tomatoes -- well after dark -- the bucket was nearly full. Honestly, what did I ever do without this Victorio strainer? It's worth its weight in gold.

Then it was time to bag everything up and freeze the purée.

Then I scrubbed, and I mean scrubbed, our beloved but scarred and stained kitchen table, to get all the goop off.

After all this industry, I had lots of tomatoes left over. Some are still underripe, some are juuust barely starting to flush red, and some are green and hard.

Don found a large shallow box, so we dumped most of the tomatoes into it...

...and scattered some bananas among them. Bananas release ethylene, a natural ripening agent. In the closed environment of the box, the tomatoes will ripen slowly over the next few weeks (we'll have to periodically pluck out the ripest ones as we go).

A layer of newspapers, and the rest of the tomatoes went onto a second layer with more bananas. By the way, not every green tomato will necessarily ripen; my understanding is a tomato has to have even the tiniest bit of color or it will just stay green. But we dumped everything into the box because, well, what the heck. We had room.

Then we closed up the box.

This box has such excellent proportions that we'll probably hang onto it for future tomato harvests.

Eventually I'll cook the purée down and turn it into sauce, but it's too early for two reasons: One, as the green tomatoes ripen, I'll be adding to the purée inventory in the freezer; and two, we're still not using the cookstove 24/7 for heat (maybe about 16/7), and since the purée will take several days to cook down into sauce, I'll wait until we have the stove going constantly and take advantage of the heat.

Glad that chore is done!

Cherry purée

After netting our little cherry bushes a couple weeks ago...

...it was time to draw back the veil...

...and pick some cherries.

This is the first year we've had cherries from these bushes. The fruit was beautiful, but I was disappointed by the taste. These are sour cherries but with a high sugar content, and I was expecting, I dunno, sweet cherries, I guess.

Nevertheless I picked the first crop and re-veiled the bushes until the rest should ripen. I got a solid bowl-full.

Next I had to figure out how to stone them. I don't have a cherry stoner (though I'll probably get one in the future), and a quick internet search revealed a chopstick would work in a pinch. And so it did, though it was laborious.

Not great, but adequate for my immediate needs.

However it was messy messy messy. Protecting clothes (apron) is vital.

Tossing the pits into a large bowl splattered cherry juice everywhere, and poking the pits out of the cherries splattered more juice. Trust me: apron, old shirt, anything.

Next step, the food strainer. I first used this tool last year when straining tomatoes, and it worked beautifully. The instructions specifically state it's necessary to remove the stones before puréeing cherries, hence the chopstick option.

I didn't have many cherries, so this step didn't take long. It did splatter some more, though. I tell ya, don't have anything nearby you don't want stained when processing cherries.

I ended up with a bit over a pint of purrée, so I put it in the fridge until the rest of the cherries were ripe. A few days later I picked the remaining fruit, unnetted the now-bare cherry bushes, and puréed the final (tiny) crop.

Final haul for our first year of harvesting cherries: two pints:

These I labeled and put in the freezer until I have enough fruits to combine into a canning session.

I started out being disappointed by the sourness of the cherries, but after puréeing them I've changed my mind. Sure, they're not the best for fresh eating, but the purée is absolutely phenomenal and the smell is divine. Sweetened just a bit, the purée can used for sauce (ice cream, anyone?) or juice, and it's loaded with nutrients. So, no complaints.

That said, we did some research and found a sweet cherry bush we'll order next year, and give that a try. Variety is the spice of life, or so they say.

By the way, this was a day's haul last week: last of the raspberries, half of the cherries, and the blueberry bushes are just starting to peak.

Making tomato purée

It's late in the season, but finally our tomatoes are coming ripe.

I went out this week and picked the first batch of the season. Prior to this, we only got a few ripe slicers for sandwiches. Now the paste tomatoes are -- at last -- ripening.

I had to be careful as I picked. A few tomatoes were beyond redemption, but the wasps loved them.

There are tons of green tomatoes left, so hopefully they'll ripen before we get our first frost.

Meanwhile, I wanted to make tomato purée. This staple of every pantry is fairly laborious, because not only do the skins and stems need to be removed, but the seeds as well.

Introducing a nifty gizmo I bought last year but never used (because our tomato plants didn't ripen): a food strainer.

I had no idea what to expect from this piece of equipment (having never used one before) and had a sinking feeling it was going to be very complicated to operate.

Oddly enough it was an article by the incomparable Jackie Clay in the latest issue of Backwoods Home Magazine that made me realize what a valuable resources this tool is.

She specifically mentions the Victorio food strainer and notes how easy it is to use.

So I assembled it and gave it a try.

The directions are extremely clear.

I didn't have to pre-process the tomatoes at all (except a light rinsing). I merely cut them into chunks and added them to the hopper.

Holy cow, it was fabulous. Easy to crank, and perfect results.

The purée comes out the front, entirely devoid of seeds, skin, etc.

All the junk comes out the side hopper. Apparently this junk can be run once more through the hopper to squeeze a bit more pulp out, but it wouldn't be a whole lotta extra, so I didn't bother.

I stopped periodically to dump the puréed tomatoes into a larger bowl, but otherwise I just happily cranked away.

All things considered, it wasn't really all that messy either.

I gave the leftovers to the chickens, but they didn't think much of it. After a few minutes of half-hearted pecking, they abandoned it. I dumped it in the compost pile.

Cleanup was pretty straightforward.

The instructions specifically state the parts should not be placed in a dishwasher, which is fine since we don't have one anyway.

A brush was necessary to get to the narrow end of the strainer basket and get all the tomato pulp out of the mesh.

The food strainer has some small parts (a spring, a gasket, etc.) that I bagged up to keep them together. I may order extras of these parts, just in case.

I ended up freezing the purée until I have enough to justify canning a full batch. I'll keep picking tomatoes as they come ripe. We've had a couple of close calls with freezing temps, but thankfully it hasn't damaged the garden yet.

Altogether I couldn't be more pleased with this strainer I purchased last year. If I hadn't been stopping take photos, etc., the whole process from assembling the unit to cleaning it up took about half an hour. The actual straining of the tomatoes took -- maybe -- fifteen minutes tops. Consider how much longer it would have taken to heat water, dip the tomatoes, slip the skins, smush them up, etc., and you can see this is quite a time-saver. The results are also far superior.

Definitely an excellent addition to our kitchen repertoire.