Tomato Juicing Party!

Tonight, my family and I learned how to make homemade canned tomato juice!  Over 20 years ago, our close friends of the family, Dean and Nelma McGee, used to do a lot of canning with their family when they lived in Arkansas.  They had enough tomatoes from their garden this year that they decided to can some tomato juice this year.  Luckily, she extended an invitation to us to bring our excess tomatoes over and learn the process, too!

Not only does Nelma have the reputation for being a great cook, she is also an outstanding hostess!  When we arrived at their house this evening, they had a round table set-up in their garage with a plastic yellow table cloth on it.  They had set their juicer up on this table and everything was prepared for us to start. There were 8 of us in attendance for the fun, so it felt like a party! 

After soaking them in a bucket of water, we cut off the tops of the tomatoes, along with any bad spots.  Then, we cut the tomatoes in quarters.

(Note: LOL...Nelma wanted me to put a disclaimer on this entry to make sure everyone knows she doesn't usually go around with no make-up and hair unfixed, but she had been battling serious neck pain all day and didn't decide to do the tomato juicing till last minute.  I think she still looks great!)

 As we were cleaning and quartering the tomatoes, Dean and Kately (and for a short time, Brett)started running the juicer.  Kately would place the tomatoes in the top of the juicer and use a small wooden plunger to push the tomatoes down the to bottom of the white funnel while Dean continuously cranked the juicer.  The peeling and seeds would run into the blue bowl while the juice ran into the white triangular pan.

Kately got to a point where she couldn't keep from tasting the juice every time she put another tomato in the funnel.  Anyone who knows Dean, knows he wasn't about to let her get by with that without giving her a hard time about it!  Looks like he was trying to start a food fight with her, huh?! :-)  He kept telling Kately she was the Tomato Queen.  I told her she was the only kid at school that would be able to say she had made tomato juice with Mr. Dean.  She responded by saying, "That's because I am the only one related to him!" LOL...I love that we have close family friends that my kids think of as family. :-)

After Dean and Kately finished with the juicer, here's the juice we ended up with...it was close to 16 quarts!

Brett was more interested in eating slices of tomato than juicing tomatoes, so of course I had to get a picture of grammy, papa and Brett "taste testing" the tomatoes!

We then proceeded inside with the juice to bring it to a boil for 5 minutes...

Then we filled each jar just below the rim, used a spoon to clear off all the bubbles on the top layer of juice and poured a teaspoon of non-iodized salt into the jars...

 

Finally, the jars were ready to be sealed...Ryan was our official lid tightener since he is SO strong, as our kids would say!

Here is the finished product...now we just wait to hear the lids "pop" so we know they sealed properly!  Ta Da!

The following sign hangs above the kitchen sink at Dean and Nelma's house.  They truly have the gift of hospitality and this sign is so fitting for them.  A BIG THANK YOU to Dean and Nelma for taking the time to invite us over and show us how this process is done.  We were blessed to have met you close to 8 years ago...We love you both like family!

Cantaloupes!

Here's our harvest from this evening...we were able to add cantaloupes to the mix!  HOORAY for new produce!  They smell wonderful..can't wait to cut into one and see how it tastes...

Random Updates...

This evening, we truly had a garden feast for dinner--complete with corn on the cob, green beans, sliced tomatoes and fried okra!  Of course, we added KFC for the meat, but everything else came from the garden.  It was a very satisfying feeling to know we had grown the majority of our meal in our own back yard.  The most exciting moment of the evening was when both of my picky veggie eaters, namely Ryan and Brett, raved about the homemade fried okra I made.  I was so excited, I had to get a picture to document it...(I am so glad my husband has a sense of humor about this blog and is such a good sport! LOL!)

With as much work as there is to do in the garden each day, we always welcome any new "helpers".  We had a new helper in the garden this evening!  Welcome...My mom! 

Something I've always admired and appreciated about my mom is how supportive she was in almost whatever us kids pursued.  I could always count on mom to atleast "act" interested in what I was interested in, whether she really was or not.  :-)  And again...What a great supporter and good sport she's been through this garden project...There is no telling how many hours of garden conversation she has had to endure between the time I have spent with her each week and also living with dad!  We couldn't have accomplished many of our major tasks on our garden to-do list without her because she has helped with the grandkids so I wouldn't have to run back to the house every 2 minutes getting snacks, drinks, helping someone go potty, etc...  I hope she always knows how much her support has meant throughout my life and I don't take it for granted.  I love her so much and feel so blessed to call her "mom".  Here she is picking tomatoes...

Our pole beans have really started growing up our wigwams we built a couple weeks ago...Take a look!

The next two rows of sweet corn have begun to tassle.  At the end of these two rows is where we planted some Indian corn...This corn has a completely different look than the sweet corn and it is growing so tall!

We have harvested almost all of our cabbage...Dad insisted we get a picture of how big the cabbage plants got, so I got the honor of posing after cutting another head of cabbage this evening...The really don't look very pretty anymore...If we had taken this picture a month ago, it would have look a lot better, but oh well!











Sweet Corn has arrived!

The past few little rains we received have helped give our corn that last little boost it needed to finally give use some mature ears.  This morning, dad picked a little over 3 dozen ears of the Honey Select sweet corn we planted close to 75 days ago. 

As a child, I remember my dad eating the corn raw as soon as he picked an ear, which I thought seemed a bit strange.  But, this morning, when he pulled the husks back on one and tried it, I took a bite, as well...It was delicious!  It was so sweet and crunchy...The kernels were just bursting with flavor!  The corn had some worms at the ends of the ears, but nothing that couldn't be cut off.  Dad said he has seen A LOT worse, which made me happy ours was only a minor nuisance.  In the coming days, we will have a lot of corn picking to do...I am so excited everything has been producing as we had hoped!  A BIG THANK YOU TO OUR ULTIMATE PROVIDER!

More Beans...

Kately and I sat down the other evening and snapped our last batch of green beans we had picked.  Since the 4th of July holiday was approaching, I knew we wouldn't need these beans for a while.  We snapped, blanched and prepared them for the freezer this time.  It's a great feeling to open my freezer and add garden items which will get us through till next year's garden and I love saving money! :-)
Daddy snapped a picture of me and my little helper while we were in action...

Attack of the Tomatoes!

Well, our waiting for tomatoes has ceased! For the past week, we have been blessed with a basket full almost every day!  They aren't all "picture perfect" tomatoes, but they still taste absolutely delicious!  It has become a daily request from my kiddos for a bowl of tomatoes as a snack! I must say, I've been snacking on them, as well...MMM....

Here are a few pictures of our recent daily harvests...

Hot Potato, Hot Potato!

This is Kately.  Mommy said I could do this blog post since I was so curious about how it works.  Yesterday, we dug up our first batch of potatoes! Papa came over in the morning and helped us with the HOT job.  Grandpa George loaned us his potato fork to make things a little easier. 

First, we slid the fork underneath the mounds of dirt trying not to scar the potatoes.  Then, when papa lifted the dirt, little red potatoes appeared!  Some were BIG, some were small.  Take a look at our pictures below...

 

WHOA!  HOT POTATO!