Amazing Food Strainer

I've mentioned my fantastic Squeezo-style food strainer a couple times already (here and here). If you do a lot of canning (especially tomato sauce, pumpkin puree, or applesauce) you have to get one of these gadgets. I recently used my Roma Food Strainer to make tomato puree for canning spaghetti sauce. 

Load the hopper full of roughly hacked up tomatoes (I mostly just cut them in half so they wouldn't explode al over the place when they get pulled into the grinder) skins on, stems on, gross corky cracked parts and all. 

Out one end come the skins, cores, stems and seeds.

I passed the waste material through the strainer an extra time to get a bit more pulp out.

Out the other end comes the tomato pulp, perfectly pureed and seedless.

Making tomato puree using the food strainer was a lot easier and faster than the way I used to do it (core the tomatoes, plunge into boiling water, plunge into ice bath, remove skins, chop up, puree in blender). Hopefully I'll be willing to make a few extra batched of sauce this year since it's so easy.

Disappointing Watermelon

I picked up a watermelon from the Amish vendors at the farmer's market last weekend. I was really excited because this was going to be my first taste of watermelon this summer. I cut it open and this is what I got:

Ugh!

Well, at least somebody got some satisfaction out of it.

I'm actually kind of worried because the Amish people must have sold like 30 or 40 watermelons that day. Maybe mine was a fluke? Hopefully they won't be getting a swarm of unhappy customers next weekend.

P.S. I do actually have a few small watermelons in my garden. I haven't harvested them yet (partially because they're still small, and partially because I don't know how to tell if they are ripe). Any suggestions on knowing when to harvest?

Jumbo Tomatoes

Here are a few photos of my most monstrous tomatoes:

Yellow Brandywine

Prudens Purple

Aunt Ruby's German Green

Pruden's Purple

Last Farmer's Market of the Year

I participated in my last farmer's market weekend for the season. The market continues through August, but I foresee the next few weekends being jam packed with canning spaghetti sauce and salsa, traveling, and preparation for the upcoming semester.

I had lots of tomatoes for sale at the market. I sold heirloom tomatoes by the piece and small bags of mixed cherry tomatoes.

Just like last year, the heirloom tomatoes didn't go over very well with the customer base in my area. Many people have never seen a non-red tomato. I actually heard a women walk by and say in a somewhat snide way "Those are tomatoes? They don't look right." Then again, I also heard people pronouncing the word 'kohlrabi' as 'kohl-rabbi' (yes, like the Jewish word). There was also an amusing women wandering the booths shouting out "Does anyone have pomodoro tomatoes? I want to make marinara sauce and I need pomodoro tomatoes." I couldn't bring myself to explain to her that 'pomodoro'  is Italian for 'tomato' and that she was basically asking for 'tomato tomatoes'. I did however, explain that marinara sauce can be made with any kind of tomato (and of course, she proceeded to buy some tomatoes from the Amish vendors instead of from me).

I continue to secretly hate the Amish vendors...I came home with probably 2/3 of the tomatoes I took with me. However, they are currently living out their legacy in a batch of spaghetti sauce.

There were a few things that went over pretty well that surprised me. I sold most of the beets I took as well as all of the edamame (almost every single customer was curious about them). I also sold every single kohlrabi I took, which was almost shocking. I didn't sell a single bunch of beet greens, sage, or tarragon, the swiss chard did not go over well, nor did the sprouts (which always did well last year). The farmer's market is a fickle thing. I don't understand people's choices (my stuff was just as good as the darn Amish people's and my prices were the same), their inability to do simple math, and their lack of food education, but I knew that from last year. 

Principe Borghese

My principe borghese plants are probably the most productive tomato plants this year. I think I planted six plants and that was obviously way too many! Back when I was planning my garden, the thought of truck loads of sun-dried tomatoes seemed like a great idea, but I can barely keep up with these things!

This is just a couple days worth of tomatoes!

I swear, my dehydrator has been running non-stop for the last 3 weeks.

Edamame

Edamame was one of the new crops I wanted to try this year. I got my seeds from Pinetree Garden Seeds. I'm still not sure if edamame are different from normal soybeans, but these ones (the variety was called 'Envy') tasted great!

I grew two very long rows of soybeans this year. I was expecting the beans to ripen around the same time as my bush beans, but I didn't realize that soybeans are a fairly long season crop. They finally started to bulk up last week.

I'm a little disappointed by the size of the pods and the beans. Most of the pods only have two small beans inside. However, they taste great (so much better than the frozen kind you can buy at the grocery store).

I rinsed the pods before boiling them (the hairy pods collect a lot of dirt). Then I boiled them for 2-3 minutes in very salty water. Drain and sprinkle a little extra salt (I always use kosher salt) before serving.

I'm a little overwhelmed by these beans, so I think I'm going to have to freeze some of them. Hopefully they'll taste just as good frozen as fresh.

Making Sun-dried Tomatoes

My sun-dried tomatoes aren't technically sun-dried, but rather dehydrated. I started with Principe Borghese tomatoes, which are fairly dry to begin with and are grown especially for drying. I grew about 10 plants this year and I'm getting tons of fruit.

Each tomato is cut in half and put skin side down on the drying rack.

It took quite a few fruit to fill each drying rack.

After drying, the fruit shrink down a lot! I should have weighed them before and after to see the change in water weight. Several large colanders full of fresh fruit fit into a single sandwich bad once dried.