Questions about Pressure canning

[mickey328]

Woohoo! You will LOVE it! I still do my applesauce the "old fashioned" way because I prefer it chunky and I've not seen anything that will give me that option. But even just for the tomatoes we did, it was so very worth the money! I'm really glad you found one for a reasonable amount...and it'll be a gift that will give to the whole family! Congrats!

 

[gardendufus]

LOL Mickey you sold me too. Just bought mine from Amazon (cheaper than lehmans). I've already frozen 20 gallons (about 80 lbs) of tomatoes, hopefully I can just defrost then use the Roma.

 

[mickey328]

That's awesome! You'll love it!! Dave and I used ours today for apples. We did have to cook them to soften them but all we did was rinse 'em off, quarter 'em and cook for just a little while. We dumped 'em in the mill and cranked away. I have a large crockpot full right now cooking down for apple butter...it was 4 grocery bags full of apples, and from start to in the pot...about 5 hours...no peeling, no coring. We were remarking on how the thing's already paid for itself and we've only had it a couple months!

It should work great for your tomatoes. Once the frost is out of 'em, just dump 'em in and grind away. We actually ran the leavings through again...just to make sure we got all the good stuff LOL, then I ran it all through the juicer when I was making the veg juice and we got even more good from them 'maters. I'm hoping we can get some good peaches next year (too pricey for our budget this year)...it'll be great for them too for both butter and jam.

Hmmm, I broke down and bought some black raspberries this year (just HAD to make some mead from them) and I'm thinking once I thaw them, I can run them thru the Roma with the finest screen and it should remove the seeds. Oh dear...my mind's whirling again....

 

[silkensunlight]

I got the Roma today and I had to try it out. Holy cow! I did a whole bunch of tomatoes in no time! I've probably got 3 gallons of pulp/juice to turn into sauce in the morning. It was really easy to use and there is practically no waste. I took the advice to run the skins through a second time and there was hardly anything left when I was done. And the girls got a nice treat from all the seeds and leftovers! I can just see how this is going to make life so much easier, even just with tomatoes.

 

[mickey328]

Aha, another believer! LOL...ain't it wonderful? I'm too impatient to cook and cook and cook the sauce, so I strained the pulp to thicken it. I saved the juice and added some juiced vegetables and then canned my own version of V-8. After I ran the stuff through the Roma twice, I ran it through the Champion juicer twice and got all the juice out of it. Like yours, my chickens got some treats, though they weren't real crazy about it. The rest went into the compost pile where it''ll "cook" down in no time since it's already so finely chopped. Essentially no waste...gotta love that, and the speed and ease of processing...priceless

 

[CraftyChicky]

Wow, you all are awesome. Thanks for all the good info. Mickey, I also subscribe to Backwoods Home and love the magazine. We bought the CD with the 42 yrs anthology. Wow, what a resource. And, Jackie Clay is really good. I"ve bought a couple of her books, canning, a cook book. She is really a wealth of information and I love her article of questions and answers in the magazine. The other thing I'm interested in is getting a grain mill and grinding my own grains. I hear (or read) that bread from home ground grains is really good. Are your and your husband preppers?

 

[mickey328]

So far, we've just got the most recent issue, but I've pretty much read it cover to cover, and I've really been looking through the book I got as well. Dave had a subscription for many years a long time ago and found it really useful, so we decided to go with it.

Actually, we're probably almost the opposite of preppers, LOL. If it all blows, we really kinda hope we'll poof in the first whatever. We're just trying to economize and make or make do more. I grew up in a fairly "primitive" place where life was simpler and Dave lived off the grid for years so we have some experience and would like to expand on that as much as we can. We're in our mid 50's now and are just "over" all the fast paced, gotta have more lifestyle. Plus, we both just really enjoy making stuff. Our skills and experience sort of complement each other...he can build or fix pretty much anything and I can do crafty things and lots of neat stuff in the kitchen. So we learn from each other, help each other and reap the benefits of our making as well as the time we get to spend together while doing it all