Too Many Tomatoes

 Bill planted about three million tomato plants.  Not all of them made it through their childhood in plastic cups, some were lost as leggy teenagers, but enough have made it into maturity. In previous years, I've made marinara to freeze. This year we decided to make tomato sauce and paste.  This past weekend, Bill estimates that he harvested between 80 and 90 pound of tomatoes.

 We love our Italian tomato press. We bought it from Napa Style.  With this press you don't have to peel or seed the tomatoes. The peel and seeds are strained out automatically. So one of us cuts the tomatoes and the other one works the machine.  Two times this past weekend, we filled up the roasting pan to the brim with the tomato sauce.  At this point it is very thin and needs to be thickened.

 So we then cooked the sauce at 450 degrees for at least 2 hours, until these small bubbles form. When stired, the sauce is thick enough that it stays. There may still be a small amount of liquidy sauce that kind of separates from the thickened tomato, but just stir that back in. Each "recipe" that we made filled 2 quart jars. We then vacuumed the lid and froze them.

While cutting the mountain of tomatoes, Bill said, "won't it be great to open one of these after there is snow on the ground?"