Thread by @arturoviaggia

Today we're canning tomatoes and making sauce .... stay tuned!

#countryliving #ItalianStyle

So full disclosure: these aren't our own tomatoes. We don't have enough in our garden, and the ones we have this year are still green.

Picked up these beautiful plum tomatoes this morning from @ConfredaFarms in Hope, Rhode Island

Here's the machine that does the magic. It separates the seeds and skin and leaves the passata (because it passes through the machine, I assume).

Does it have a special name in English? Boh. I asked my mother-in-law what it's called in Sicilian. She shrugged and said, "the machine to make tomatoes!" Ok, easy enough! 😂🍅🍅

After washing and splitting, it's time to boil and reduce! This takes a while.

At this point, the smell of cooking tomatoes begins to fill the house.

Then the fun begins! Cranking the reduction through "the machine that makes tomatoes" to separate the skin and seeds from the pulp--in other words, passing them through the machine, leaving what's left called "passata". This part gets messy!

Next it's time to fill up the bottles. We use old soda and beer bottles -- and from the looks of it my suocera has had some of these for a few decades!

Then cap the bottles.

Now I'm faced with the question: what is the better thing to fill a Guiness bottle with?

Finally boil the bottles until they seal.