2021 Life Logs, Day 260: All Day, All Night . . . Tomatoes
Date: Friday, September 17, 2021
Weather: Early AM Rain, Cloudy Day; High Temp 75, Low Temp 64 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Tomatoes . . . 120 pounds of them is a lot to tackle at one time. This morning I picked up 30 pounds of Opalka paste tomatoes from Carrie at Peach Tree Farm to add to the 80+ pounds of regular tomatoes from Moonlight Rose Farm and the 10 to 12 pounds of San Marzano paste tomatoes from my garden. I started at 8:30 am and am just now shutting down for today. I divided the three different kinds of tomatoes in half and blanched, peeled, and de-seeded 60 pounds today, added the ingredients to turn them into marinara sauce and let the sauce burble for a few hours. I did the regular tomatoes first as they have more water in them than the paste tomatoes. While they were burbling away to make a thicker sauce, I then processed the Opalka’s. then the San Marzano’s and added them to the pot throughout the afternoon. I have an 18-quart pot, but it was not big enough to hold all of the sauce. When it was filled to the top, I realized I didn’t have anything long enough to stir it with, so I had to take time to go to Heather’s to get a long-handled spoon and another pot. Then I had to rearrange the refrigerator in order to get two huge pots in for the night. Tomorrow morning, the sauce will come out of the fridge and go back on the stove to burble for a bit longer. Then I will start canning. While I am canning the first batch, I will blanch and de-seed the second 60 pounds. Since the amount of sauce I have completely filled the 18 quart pot plus some, I think I will get 36 pints. I can only can 7 pints at a time so it will take at least five or six hours for the canning process. The second batch will wait in the refrigerator until Sunday morning when I will put it on to burble and hopefully get the whole batch canned before bedtime on Sunday night. That’s the plan, a little ambitious, so we shall see how it goes.
