That's a picture of our second big picking off the six plants in our city garden (mid-August). I processed those into sauce, using my mom's old Victorio strainer. And was it ever a tedious endeavor. Remind me to rein us in next year and stick to two beefsteak heirlooms, for rushed lunches.
Impatient goes hand in hand with stubborn, and I claim expertise in both. Here's a picture of me, the last time I used the Victorio.
It will be another 28 years before I'll think the Victorio is a good idea again, and by then, I'll have unloaded it at a garage sale. Or heaved it down a mine shaft, Scranton style.
Overreacting to the amount of work that little pile of tomatoes was, you say? Indeed. This isn't a food blog, after all. Those beefsteaks are mostly water, and after the wall-splattering event of churning them through that contraption, and the sticky floor, thrice mopped, you still have to cook them down into a disappointingly small pot of sauce. Such a little dribble! You could never survive the winter on it.
The first batch of tomatoes I "processed" was whole fruits thrown in freezer bags, skins and cores and dirty bits intact. The second batch was as detailed, above. The third batch was a giant five-dollar-farmers-market sack of Romas, roasted in a pan with garlic, then buzzed up with fistfuls of herbs and the immersion blender. For all you lazy homesteaders out there, I'll tell you: that's the way to go. If your significant other, who happens to be a former chef, scowls at the idea of skins-left-on, just tell him you have way more important things to do. Like drink wine on the back porch. Drink whiskey on the back porch. Draw pictures, dance dances, drink cider.
I refuse to undertake any task at all that requires more than three hours to complete, starting RIGHT NOW.
But it only takes ten minutes to pick clean the cherry and paste tomatoes in our country garden. Then I wash them, cut them in half, and spread them on a sheet pan to dry in the baker's big ovens, after a night's bake. They turn into rubies that are better than jewels, because you get to eat them. This is the kind of kitchen labor I can get behind.
