I’ve been so busy canning lately. It’s that time of the year. Besides peach jam last week, this week I bought a bunch of tomatoes at the farm stand because I don’t have enough of my own yet, sadly. All those tomatoes turned into 10 jars of catsup and one pitcher of fresh tomato juice.
I used this recipe, and I really like the flavor a lot. Who knew cinnamon in your catsup was yummy? The only thing wrong is that she is smoking crack to think tomatoes are ready to go through the foodmill after 20-30 minutes. Uh, no. More like almost 3 hours.
I borrowed Frank’s mother’s foodmill, something I’ve never used before. She’s got a pressure cooker that I’m thinking about borrowing as well. She hasn’t used any of that stuff in decades.
We also got a full pitcher of fresh tomato juice, something new to me. I’ve never like V-8 or Bloody Mary mix in a can. Ick. This fresh stuff, though. Wow. It’s really tasty, like drinking a fresh picked tomato from the garden. Yum. It made a fantastic Bloody Mary, and is great for breakfast as well.
When I’m spending that much time in the kitchen, though, it’s hard to want to cook much for dinner at the end of the day. I’m really glad that I’m making extra when I do cook, which lets us just nuke something from the freezer when I can’t face the oven again.
Oh, I’m starting to maybe sort of think I might be getting the hang of fresh cheeses, at least. I made a double batch of fresh raw milk mozzarella cheese this week, finally confident enough of my ability to get the right texture and not ruin that much milk. (When it goes bad, it’s spit-out and throw-away bad.) Raw milk gives it so much yummy flavor. Bjarki loves it more than llama poop, and trust me, that’s saying something.