Tomatoes

Because of D’s bookselling business, we spend Saturdays scouring yard sales, auctions and flea markets. While she’s finding the real finds, I look through the cookbooks and then wander through the household items — specifically, kitchen junk that people buy, use once and then put out for yard sales.

Like this:

Oh yeah.  Five bucks at a yard sale in New Cumberland. I bought it with tomatoes in mind. Last year, I made a lot of tomato puree with a food mill. It was labor-intensive. The Victorino was a definite upgrade, so we bought a half-bushel of tomato seconds at Paulus Orchards and went to work.

Here’s what it looked like in our kitchen. Turn the crank and a screw pushes the tomatoes against a screen, down the chute and into the bowl. On the side, the seeds and skin go into another bowl. Pretty slick.

This is D prepping the whole tomatoes … I’m on the other side slicing (8ths) for the funnel, and feeding and cranking, and after that …

they go on the stove. I reduced the puree by half. Last winter, I had sauce that was watery and I had to add tomato paste to get to a reasonably thick pasta sauce in a reasonable time.  This winter, we’ll see.