Thursday, August 6, 2009
Weekly Farmer's Market Report
I am being bold and brave! I picked up two boxes of tomatoes to can tomorrow. It's the only thing we used to do at home that I haven't done as a wife and mom myself. I called my mom and asked her what her ratio of tomatoes was to quarts produced. She said she remembers getting 14 quarts out of a bushel. I went online to check how many pounds of tomatoes are in a bushel . 53! The boxes at the farmer's market are 20 pounders and I want to end up with 24 pints so I got two that were heaping. The lady thought they were 25-30 pounds each. I'll let you know how it turns out. I will be recovering from my knee surgery next week so there will be no report. I'm hoping Sweetie will do my hunting and gathering for me. I can't think of a better way to recover than with fresh fruit and veggies!
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So guess what I found out? You get 24 pints out of just about that many pounds of tomatoes. I used up my jars and still had enough tomatoes from ONE box to do 5 more. The lady I bought them from guestimated my boxes so this isn't very scientific. The bottom line is I got more than twice as many pints of tomatoes out of one box than I expected. I had empty quart jars and lids but the thought of running my canner all Saturday afternoon made me feel hot and sticky (which I already was by the time I was realizing my grave error Friday evening.) I called a friend who had just mentioned freezing tomatoes. She scalds, skins and dices them, just like they were being canned, but then pops them into quart freezer bags. She saves the leftover juice and makes a V8 concoction out of it. I did that today. It took just as much time to get the tomatoes ready, but the only steam came from scalding them. I got 11 quart bags (which I think hold more than a quart jar) out of the leftovers from the first box and the second full box (which is why I think the quart bags hold more since the ratio was a little less than the first box and I had more tomatoes.) I strained the leftover juice, added a little celery salt and onion powder (it already had salt in it from what I'd used on the tomatoes) and WOW is it tasty! Next year I'm only buying a 20 pound box of tomatoes. Live and learn!
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