Road Trip & Tomato Juice

We took a spur of the moment road trip on the weekend and ended up at a lovely Chinese restaurant as the meeting spot for our kids. The dinner was amazing! A fun time was had by all.

Barbeque Pig

I always have my camera with me whenever we eat out and quite often take pictures of some of the more interesting foods. I've never had restaurant staff tell me not to take pictures. At best, they are elated and most ask about it. At worst, we seriously look like tourists!

When I saw this barbequed pig, I just had to have a picture. The food at this restaurant was excellent. As a group we spent a few hours there enjoying not only the food but family bonding, something very important to my husband and myself. My husband said we likely waddled away from there but every one was happy and we had a wonderful time with lots of pictures.


Tomato Juice

On Thursday we decided to start winterizing the garden which meant clearing out the raised beds. used the excess ripe tomatoes to make tomato juice. Now I know tomato juice is cheap in the stores. To me, they always taste tinny. Home made tomato juice does not have this taste and you can eliminate the salt if you want. What I like about recipes/methods like this is you can use up as many tomatoes as you need to. Tomato juice is easy to prepare as there is little more to do than wash the tomatoes then follow the guidelines.

Method: This year I decided to can the tomato juice in 500 ml jars simply because we are a two member household most days. What I did was follow the guidelines at http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_03/tomato_juice.html so my size jars I used 1 tbsp lemon juice and 1/4 tsp Kosher salt as opposed to 1/2 tsp salt. Then I followed the guidelines in Bernardin's Tomatoes, Canning & Speciality Recipes to prevent separation during storage. Essentially what you have to do is bring part of the cut tomatoes to a boil to destroy the enzyme Pectase then continually add fresh cut tomatoes while keeping the pot at a full boil. Once all the tomatoes have been boiled, they are passed through a food strainer to remove skins and seeds. The juice is returned to boil for 5 minutes then bottled. Processing for 500 ml is 35 minutes boiling water bath.

Enjoy,