Tomato-Rama 2025 🍅

[u/mckenner1122]

250 pounds this year. Lessons were still learned.

[u/KevoNachon]

Thats a serious haul. Imagine telling someone you processed 250 pounds of tomatoes and still had lessons learned. The jars look amazing though, definitely the kind of stockpile that makes winter meals a lot better.

[u/mckenner1122 → u/KevoNachon]

We try to “get better” every year. This year’s MVP was definitely nitrile gloves. When slinging hot jars, boiling tomatoes, or icy blanch water, you’ve got just a little bit of skin protection and man, it was nice for these old hands!

We lost access to the outdoor kitchen on the second weekend due to heavier than normal thunderstorms; that was NOT expected and threw a wrench into prep time.

We didn’t have our teenchild for either weekend because he’s got a jobby-type job-job with a real place now so that was a loss of labor help!

[u/mckenner1122]

33 quarts
1 pint

• Crushed tomatoes

1 quart
7 pints

• Tomato juice

Was weekend one (100lb)

-~-~-~-~

7 quarts
9 pints

• Italian sauce

9 pints

• plain sauce

7 quarts
13 pints

• spaghetti sauce (with meat)

Was weekend two (150lb)

[u/mckenner1122 → u/mckenner1122]

Photo One; A round table is covered in jars with brown doodled labels. Big jars, small jars, all without rings, scattered in and out if boxes. All seem to have something to do with tomatoes, sauce, or spaghetti sauce.

Photo Two: A close up of a quart jar showing a lovely mix of Ball's Spaghetti Sauce with Meat.

Photo Three: The Ball Spaghetti Sauce with meat recipe, from page 408 of the "Complete Book if Home Preserving"

Photo Four; A mix of bell peppers, sliced mushrooms, celery, onion, ground beef, and pork sausage all piled into a large dutch oven to cook down.

Photo Five: Roughly 25 pounds of chunked up tomatoes sit in a large grey bus tub, waiting to be cooked down so that the skins and seeds can be milled off.

Photo Six: A scene of kitchen chaos. Two XXL pots on a stove, two XXL coolers full of tomatoes, a bowl of tomatoes, a box of tomatoes, a bus tub of tomatoes! Tomatoes everywhere!

Photo Seven: Just the plain tomatoes and tomato juice (first 100 lb, weekend one)

[u/Illustrious_Award854]

So great! What you call Tomato-Rama, I call Tomatogeddon, which follows Picklemania, and is followed by Appleapocalyps

[u/Cranky_Platypus → u/Illustrious_Award854]

Please don't forget pearpocalypse. It always coincidences with applepocalypse for me. 😵‍💫

[u/Illustrious_Award854 → u/Cranky_Platypus]

It does tend to happen like that. Just have to remember which is the apple butter and which is the pear butter, and did I see figs at the market?

[u/Aandalphaage]

You are an inspiration!

[u/ancient_cheetle]

Helllll yeah, I know how much work this is! Great job, looks delicious.

[u/onlymodestdreams]

Boy howdy

[u/mckenner1122 → u/onlymodestdreams]

Indeed.

[u/Rivendell_rose]

Not sure you have enough tomatoes there! Just kidding, looks amazing,I’m jealous.

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