Canning Can Bring Laughter

I needed to get going on my tomatoes today. I won't get them all done today by myself, but I can get a good start on them. I get my jars ready and put them in the canner to boil. I used to by those granite speckle ware type water bath canners, but I had 2 get a rust hole in them. I have this large stainless steel pot with a glass lid. I put an insert from my pressure canner in the bottom so the jars won't break when they boil. I have been told you can put a towel in the bottom as well. I don't boil my seals until I am ready to use them.

Then I poured the basket of tomatoes in my sink. This is not all of them. I had already done some at the point I thought about taking pictures. I rinse off the dirt and and leaves that dried on them. Then put them over on the cutting board.
I cut off any bad spots and pull the stems off if they are still attached. You don['t have to remove the core or the skin though. I then cut them in pieces. The smaller Roma tomatoes only got cut in half the long way. The Amish Paste tomatoes were larger, so they got cut in 4ths or 6ths the long way.
I fill this bowl with the tomato pieces. And then move over to my Squeezo Strainer.
I have had this since 1987. I have done a lot of apples with it, but I often forget about it during tomato season. It is totally made out of metal, so I think it will last for a long time to come. I am not sure if they still make the Squeezo or not. There is also one called the Victorio and then there is another brand that I think is called Back To Basics. Both of these have many plastic parts, but they work well from what I hear. For all 3 brands, you can get other size screens for doing other fruits and veggies. I have a berry screen which has much smaller holes to catch the small berry seeds and a pumpkin screen that has larger holes that let the thicker pumpkin meat come through. The yellow bowl you see catches the good sauce that is squeezed out. The green bowl catches all the waste like seeds, skin, cores, etc.
Here is looking down into the large hopper. The wooden mallet comes with it and you use it to push the tomatoes down into the hole.
Here is the sauce coming out of the screen and down the chute to the bowl. Every once in awhile, I take a spatula and clean off the screen so that the sauce will come through better.
Here is the waste after one time through. This is the waste from the bowl of cut pieces you saw above. I run them back through a second time and get more sauce out of them.
Here is what is left the second time through.
Now comes the laughter part of my canning day. Laughter is a good thing for me. As you can see from the picture below my floors are plain old cement. We want to put wood floors down someday, but until then, I am living with cement. It is really hard on my feet, knees and back. So, I take frequent breaks to sit down. In fact I am on one of those breaks right now. =) Anyway, I had been putting a piece of paper towel down on the floor under the Squeezo because the juices back up a bit and drip. My wonderful friend Ginny told me that she puts down a bowl instead. So, I decided to do that today. I just grabbed one of the dog bowls since it is stainless steel and easy to clean. Dixie (the pup) kept wanting to lick out the tomato juice. I would tell her no and she would lay down a short distance away and lay there and watch the drip until she couldn't stand it anymore.
Then she would rush over and start licking while the tomato juice dripped on her. The problem is that as she licked the bowl scooted across the floor. I would have to push it back which made her check it again and get any drops that she missed. =) Goofy dog.

Here is the sauce heating up to get ready to go in the jars for canning.

Well, I think my break time is up. Back to work!!!!