Progress Update

 

Last year, Leigh Tate over at 5 Acres and a Dream got me to reevaluate my tomato processing method. I used to blanche them to remove their skins before cooking them down but that always introduced a lot of water into them that I subsequently had to remove again. So this year, I decided to go back to my roots and just core the tomatoes and put them in a pot, skin, seeds and all, to cook down and then run them through the hand crank mill that I have to remove the skin and seeds. It was then that I remembered just how much work that was and why I had gone with the method that I have been using. But while cranking the mill by hand, the engineer in me realized that it was probably an easy thing to motorize and Amazon confirmed it. So before my second picking of tomatoes, I had one ordered and sitting in a box at my doorstep thanks to Prime. 

What took me several hours to do with the first batch of tomatoes took me only about 15 minutes this time around and was much much more efficient in getting all the juice and pulp separated from the skin and seeds. Also, since I hadn't introduced water from blanching into the system, it was much faster to cook down into sauce. This batch made about 34 pints of spaghetti sauce and probably an equal number of half pints of pizza sauce. On a side note, I had separate recipes for spaghetti and pizza sauce but upon inspection, the only significant difference was that the spaghetti sauce had onions and green peppers in it. Since I always put onions and green peppers on my pizzas anyway, I just jarred the spaghetti sauce in smaller half pint jars which is enough sauce for the two pizzas I usually make for us on pizza night and labeled it pizza sauce. I'll keep this a secret from my kids though until they have eaten a few pizzas so there isn't a rebellion at the veggies on their normally plain cheese pizza.

Above is shot showing the lower cabinets installed in the cabin I'm helping to build. I'm still missing door and drawer handles and the false front that will go where the sink will go but it gives you a sense of the rustic nature of the cabin and what I'm aiming for. My next step is to build three upper cabinets to go above on either side of the window. I'm happy at how things are turning out.

Finally, here are the homemade drawer and door handles after staining but before I put on any protective polyurethane on them. I used a scrap piece of douglas fir that I had used for the toe kick part of the lower cabinets. I milled it down to size and put a cope on the underneath side to provide a comfortable place to put you fingertips. I stained it with some leftover and very old dark stain I had in the basement for contrast. The shorter ones will be door pulls and the longer ones will be drawer pulls. I made an extra one of each just in case I mess one up just so I don't have to go through all the steps to get it to match.