HOW TO SAVE TONS OF TIME AND WORK WHEN PROCESSING YOUR TOMATO HARVEST
I must confess, I cannot claim to be the creator of this wonderful time and work saving method of processing the tomato harvest. It comes from one of my favorite sites, Old World Garden Farms.
Jim and Mary both work at paying jobs and on their beautiful, bountiful farm. Their site is filled with helpful information regarding gardening, cooking and building projects.
They came up with this process in order to be better able to preserve their huge tomato harvest when they get home from their day jobs.
At first I was a bit skeptical, which is my wont, but after trying their method I am eager to share it with you.
It's simple, no more boiling water and ice baths to remove the skins. Simply rinse off the tomatoes and place them in the freezer. I just set them in the freezer where ever there is enough space.
photo from http://www.prevention.com/ |
Remove a few at a time from the freezer after and hour or two, hold under running, cold water for a minute or so, and the skins peel right off! No fuss, no mess, no boiling water and hot to handle tomatoes!
It's fabulous. In the time it usually takes me boil water, I was able to peel several pounds of tomatoes. After peeling I placed them inside freezer bags until I am ready to finish process them or cook them.
Right now I have absolutely no free time for processing my tomato crop as usual and I was worried about the losing the crop. No longer. I have the first harvest already in the freezer, and I thought I'd try out the method on a peck of peaches which was begin to become over-ripe and I didn't have time to make the peach jam for which I had purchased the peaches.
I rinsed off the fruit and set a couple of them in the freezer with the tomatoes. After an hour or two, I held
the peaches under running cold water, and they peeled just as easily as the tomatoes.
So, when I return home from the farm next week, my peaches will have been saved and sit frozen in the freezer waiting to be peeled and processed.
It feels so good to know I won't lose my harvest, especially since this years harvest is less than in past years.
I noticed there has been an obvious lack of bees in this years garden. Usually the garden has been humming with bees, but not this year.
I haven't even seen those big, black and yellow bumble bees which normally feast on the clover.
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