A sad tale of two tomato gardens...

My tomatoes are not looking nearly as good as last year - next year, I am definitely mixing in several bags of manure and more fresh dirt. I threw in the towel and ordered a 20# box of San Marzano tomatoes from Mariquita and brought them home on the back of my motorcycle on Thursday night. I think that Andy, who writes a great blog Ladybug Letter, hasn't been exposed much to folks who use motorcycle for anything other than joy riding because he remarked, "You'll sure make an interesting figure in traffic with all that stuff on the motorcycle!"

Sunday, I seeded all the tomatoes and heated them up enough to put them through the Kitchen Aid food mill attachment. I quickly discovered that the skins clog up the food mill attachment quite quickly and ended up putting through the solid matter 3-4 times before I got all of the good stuff out of the skins - resulting in about 1# of skins and seeds going to compost out of 20# total. After simmering down the sauce in two pots (I really do need one big stockpot) - I put up my tomato sauce.

YIELD:
9 - 16 oz jars of San Marzano tomato sauce
9 - 8 oz jars of San Marzano tomato sauce