On Tuesday morning I got the kitchen cleaned up and my general helper arrived at 8AM. I sent her out to harvest the storage onions, enough for 3 double batches of sauce.
I had ordered 40# of organic tomatoes from a local farm store and when she had harvested all the onions, we headed out to pick up the tomatoes.
The goldy mum on the east side of the steps had died in the winter. Golden mums are sort of hard to find, as most are bright yellow or rust colored. But I was delighted to see several at the farm store, so I got one.
We also got 2 more onions, as the entire harvest of onions fell short. This is the worst harvest I’ve ever had of these onions. They need sunlight and that’s been in short supply all summer. Then we went to our local coop because the farm store didn’t have red bell peppers.
I found some nice large peppers and picked up a few things and we headed home. I got started washing tomatoes while she set up the new-to-me roasters on the back porch. Then she came in and started washing tomatoes too.
My helper friend arrived at 9:30AM and he got all the onions peeled. I started blanching the tomatoes for 30 seconds in boiling water to loosen the skins. Then they went right into a cold water bath to stop the cooking.
My general helper and I started prepping the tomatoes. I was quickly disappointed in the quality of the tomatoes.
While they looked nice and red on the outside, well over half of them were not ripe inside. The Squeezo machine’s screen plugs up really fast with unripe tomato so we had to cut away those parts and discard them.
Once the tomatoes were done, my general helper had to go. My helper friend started on the peppers.
He got the harder to cut up pieces done before he had to go. I finished the easier ones he’d left for me and then diced up the onions.
While he was doing the peppers I was running the tomatoes through the Squeezo. We had done a good job removing unripe bits as the screen only plugged up once.
I ran the waste through 6 times and it got smaller and smaller.
I got nearly a whole bowl of pulp and juice and that’s all the waste that was left, in the yellow bowl.
I had dumped each bowlful into the roasters and turned the heat on. I stopped at 1PM once I had the Squeezo cleaned up to have some lunch and rest.
I got a call from MassHealth from a Eligibility Specialist whose job it was to mediate the problem to avoid having to hold an appeal. She took a bunch of information and would try to find answers to a couple of my questions and call me on Wednesday with what she found.
Then I went back to work and finished the onions and peeled the equivalent of 28 cloves of garlic from my harvest. Once those were pressed and in the roasters, I set about collecting the seasonings.
I soon discovered I’d forgotten to get parsley at the coop. The baby rabbit that slips through the garden fencing had eaten all I grew this year.
I finally got the sauce cooking around 5PM, except for the parsley. My brother picked some up for me on his way home.
It’s going to be interesting using the roasters for the cooking down process. They both heated up well, but do not have an off setting, so have to be unplugged if not in use. I set them both to 300F because that’s what the blogger that I saw using them did.
She has a new baby so was up in the night to check on them. But in case I slept through the night, I turned them down to 250F when I went to bed.
Mid day on Tuesday the hump in the dining room floor got so big the boards came apart. I took them out but there’s still a hump from all the humidity. It will disappear once the humidity drops and I start the masonry heater. Then we can put the board back in place.
On Wednesday I need to finish cleaning up the mess in the kitchen and then process the sauce in the blender and can it. My general helper will be here in late afternoon to go do errands and plant the goldy mum, if it’s not raining. It’s supposed to get cool, in the 60’s, and rain all day.