Pruney Tomato Fingers

I love tomatoes. All I need is a little salt & pepper and I could eat slices of beautifully ripe tomatoes all day. That is until I spent about 5 hours this weekend peeling, cutting, and de-seeding them until my hands were ridiculously pruney and covered with tomato guts...I'm talking so pruney that if I had cut myself, I most likely wouldn't have felt it. After that, the thought of eating them wasn't so appealing. 

Oh, and did you know rotten tomatoes have a distinct smell? At least that's what my cousins and their family (who have been making homemade sauce every August for years) say. I couldn't tell the difference, even when they handed me one saying "oh, this one is so disgusting, smell it!", I just nodded my head like "OH of course that's rotten, how gross". Clearly they have all developed super sensitive tomato noses after doing this for so many years, but I just wonder how many rotten tomatoes I've ended up eating over the years...

So anyway, I have been eating this sauce my whole life since we are very close with my Aunt & Uncle and their family and my Aunt M is an excellent cook! Her dad also works at very well know butcher shop on South St. so the meats and sausages I have gotten to eat over the years are absolutely phenomenal! I have always been slightly jealous of their authentic Italian tradition of making their homemade sauce and this year they offered to have my brother, sister and I come help out for the day!

The men start the day around 4am to begin the process of the pureed tomatoes. You can see my Uncle J jarring the sauce and I think the total number of pureed jars was around 140! This is split between three families and is MORE than enough!! 

When it was time for the peeled tomatoes to be done we were ready to get to work! First they get blanched in a large pot. This helps soften the tomatoes and makes peeling them much easier.

Once they are peeled they get the tops cut off and seeds taken out, as well as any yellow parts removed...everyone kept saying that last year's batch was better but apparently they say that every year... 

Let me tell you, this process is not easy! I was in awe of how fast the seasoned sauce makers were, my Aunt and her sister would go through at least 5 tomatoes each by the time I finished one! Once the tomatoes are done they get stuffed into jars with some salt & basil and get cooked again inside the jars when they have cooled down. (There is a video of my Uncle J stuffing the jars below to see the process...with some fun country music in the background!) 

We probably finished around 2pm and in true Italian fashion the next step was to prepare a huge feast! I'm talking fresh bread, salad, steak, pasta, 3 kinds of sausage, pizzelles, and plenty of homemade wine to go around. We were all pretty famished after a long morning of tomato handling and after eating I think we were all ready for a nice long shower and nap!

Overall, it was an awesome day and while everyone kept joking that we are probably going to be "busy" next year when it is time to do this again I would do it in a heartbeat. YES it was exhausting and YES I would only do it once a year, but it was so fun to learn about the process and take part in this tradition that at the end of the day all I really wanted to do was to thank them for allowing me to participate!

Now I just can't wait to get a few jars to start enjoying the fruits of our labor!...haha get it because tomatoes are fruit ;)