Bottled Sunshine

Just about every family has an eccentric or even a crazy uncle.  You know – the kind of uncle that is a couple cards short of a full deck.  The uncle you dread appearing at thanksgiving dinner with his wild conspiracy theories and fringe politics.  The sort of embarrassing uncle you wish would just stay away.  Then there is the favorite uncle.  Most families have a favorite uncle or two.  These are the elder statesmen, the role models, the guy that you identify-with and have an affinity-for.  

Uncle Dick's family and mine grew-up at opposite ends of the block.  We were close.  It was almost like having brothers and sisters that lived in a house of their own.  Richard was my pop's little brother and my favorite uncle.  He's been gone thirty-eight years now and I still think about him from time to time.  Especially when making homemade tomato juice. 

One of my fondest childhood memories is of my favorite Uncle Dick making tomato juice.  That's an odd memory for sure isn't it?  Growing-up in the 1960s I think most every family had a Foley Food Mill for grinding-up all sorts of stuff like apples and tomatoes.  I recently discarded the ancestral food mill that had been languishing in the basement.  It was dented and rusty and the paint was flaking from the wooden handles – likely lead-based paint too.  I have a newer, stainless model of the Foley mill that I purchased at Fleet Farm.  The home canning aficionado's all-purpose resource - Fleet Farm has everything you need.  But I digress. 

About the juice. 

There is no written record of Uncle Dick's tomato juice recipe but since I’ve been making the stuff for about a dozen years it does exist out here on the interweb because I blog about it from time to time.  Other than that it’s a simple and failsafe process that you can do from memory. 

I fetched a bunch of jars of canned tomatoes from last year's garden.  The tomatoes have already been peeled and cooked when they were canned a half a year ago.  Simply pop the lid, dump them into the mill and go about grinding them into juice.  The mill can easily handle up to a couple of quarts at a time.  It's old-school as far as juicing goes but it works just fine. 



Do you have any idea how lip-smacking yummy canned homegrown tomatoes are when you open a jar?  WOW!  It sends you right back to August and September. 

As you process your home-grown, canned tomatoes thru the mill all you have to do is periodically removing the residual pulp and seeds for the compost bin. 

 

 

Grinding away I filled my largest stainless stock pot. 

The canned tomatoes already had salt but I added some additional kosher salt along with a dash or white pepper and garlic salt for taste.   Gently raise the heat until just shy of a boil and fill sterilized quart jars with the hot juice leaving 3/4 inch of headspace.  Top with lids and bands. 

  
Process in the canner for another twenty minutes, remove and set aside to cool.  When the lids pop they're good to go.  You have a shelf-stable pasteurized juice product.  No need to refrigerate unless you wish to chill before serving or you have an opened and unfinished jar. 

Sixteen quarts of bottled sunshine. 

Thanks for the inspiration Uncle Dick - you're the best! 




* A word about the jars and lids.  Sterilize your jars by immersing them in boiling water or running them through the dishwasher on the 'sanitize' cycle.  Lids are easy - in the microwave heat a Pyrex measurer full of water to a boil. Drop your lids in the hot water.  Fish them out with a sterile tongs.