Hello Heather!
Saturday August 31 1996 20:10, Heather Tucker wrote to Jurry Weijmer:
 HT> *** Quoting Jurry Weijmer to Greg Mayman dated 08-28-96 ***
 >> Just a question, is there in youre country a problem with round the
 >> year delivery???
 HT> We have tomatoes in the grocery store year round, but I don't like
 HT> them.  They don't have the as much flavor as the ones I grow myself.
Yes, you're absolutely right. There's no comparison at all is there... You 
would think that some bright enterprising company would work out a way of 
getting decent tomatoes into the shops at an affordable price. It's amazing 
that we live in a world which can send people to the moon, but can;t get ripe 
tasty tomatoes into the shops!
But of course out of season, any tomatoes are going to be boring, which is 
why I sterilise mine (canning). I have to admit that it is a little time 
consuming the way I do them, but it saves immense amounts of time later.
  I grow a lot of plants so that I can supply my entire year's needs for 
cooking, tomato ketchup, tomato sauce, chutney, and soup. Every few days we 
do a pick and I either cook them directly in various ways (ketchup, sauce 
etc) or I prepare them for bottling as tomato pulp - what the french call 
"Concassee".
  If it interests anyone, we do this.  After weighing, to know how many jars 
to can into. (1 jar per lb of tomatoes "as picked").
1. Peel them (8 secs in boiling water, straight out into cold water. Skins 
peel off without the flesh cooking at all.
2. Halve equatorially and deseed. We find that with long cooking seeds can 
give a bitter taste, so we remove them and their surrounding liquid.
3. Lightly salt the flesh (inside and out) and leave to drain 1/2 an hour 
(the french call this disgorging).
4. Chop very roughly.
5. Weigh again and divide weight by the number of jars, so we can fill evenly 
into jars.
6 Fill into sterile jars and sterilise by slow water bath method. 90 mins to 
come from cold to 90C then 40 minutes with temperature at 90C. (190F).
7. Next day, remove screw rings and check seal, dry and label.
The advantage of this for us, is that if ever our recipes call for tomatoes 
(and most french recipes call for concassee tomatoes) we just open a jar and 
use them without any hassle.
All the Best
Ian
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