Tomato Juice

The Husband earned his keep tonight with one simple suggestion.

I'd picked enough tomatoes this evening to fool with canning them.  My original intention was to dice them and can them for soup, but I got to thinking about how much my mother loves tomato juice, and I decided to juice them and take her some.

My juicing equipment is, for the most part, a pile of crap.  I have a grinder pan - you know, one of those cheap things with a crescent-shaped blade in the bottom that you crank around to squeeze pulp through the holes in the pan.  It is rusty.  I have a manual juicer, a cone-shaped thing on a tripod stand with a wooden pestle that you use to mash the pulp through the cone. The problem with it is that the only pestle I have is too small for the cone, and I end up grating my knuckles on the cone when I try to use it.  I have a Juice Master, which is a giant auger thing that clamps to the kitchen table.  It spews juice on everything in the kitchen, and it has a zillion parts that have to be cleaned after use.  My other options were a food processor and a blender, but I didn't really want to shatter all those tomato seeds in the juice.

So, there I was, pulling out one thing, putting it up, pulling out something else....

The Husband comes into the kitchen and says, "What about your fancy juicer?"  I thought he was talking about the Juice Master in the attic.  He said, "No, that one over there," and pointed to the counter.

And there, next to the coffee pot, sat the shiny black Jack LaLaine Power Juicer. 

It came home with me in January, when I decided we ought to be on a juice kick.  We used it about three times.  I'd forgotten all about it, though it's been sitting in plain sight all these months.

It was perfect for the job.  I ran the tomatoes through it once, then ran the pulp back through it twice more.  About all that was left at the end was a clump of wet seeds.  The juice is thick and wonderful.

Good job, Husband!