Tomato Water and Tomato Sauce

Word of the Day

Schwiggle - The amusing rotation of one's behind while sharpening a pencil.


Woodtick Count of the Day - 42

After releasing the raccoon...on Thursday, I came back home and decided to go fishing. I fished from ~11 AM until 5 PM. That's a long time sitting out in a rowboat under the hot sun. No, I didn't get heatstroke. Amazingly enough, I didn't even get a sunburn. However, I was wearing my fishing hat so that might have saved me. Next time, I plan to bring some water along if I plan to stay out in the boat so long. I think I got a little dehydrated. However, I was having lots of fun. I caught a mess of really nice bluegills...perfect for smoking.

I called my Mom to get the brining recipe for smoking fish. Then, I called my sister to get the brining recipe for smoking fish. She chewed me out because she was in the midst of packing for a trip and she and her hubby were leaving first thing on Friday morning. Then, Mom found the recipe...and Sis found the recipe. I got the recipe. I decapitated and gutted all the bluegill, cleaned them, and then set them in the first brine...the salt brine. Then...at around 9 PM, I washed them all off and set them in the next brine...the salt/sugar brine. That's about all I could manage for one day...oh...wait...I carried the bluegill remains ("fish heads, fish heads, rolly-polly fish heads") down to the dock and baited my crayfish traps.

Friday morning, before breakfast, I checked my crayfish traps. I was a bit disappointed to see only a dozen or so in each of my traps but... The plan for the day was to bring the brined bluegills over to my folks' place where we'd use their smoker to smoke the fish. I decided to bring the live crayfish over while I was at it...not for smoking. Mom and I boiled up a pot of crayfish while we set the bluegill out to dry on the smoking racks. Smoking fish tends to be an all day project. Dad had already soaked the wood. Sis and her hubby had brought that and some charcoal up from their place...before they left town. It was really too bad that the weather was so drizzly and I think we should have let the fire burn down more before we added the wood chips...but...we ended up with smoked fish by around 5 PM that night. Twenty-four hours after I'd returned from my day's fishing.

Yesterday, HTP and I went to the Rutabaga Festival. HTP's sister and hubby were going to be there to see the hot pepper eating contest so we decided to join them. Despite the cold and drizzle, we sallied forth. It felt more like late October than late August. Oh well... I'd never seen an actual hot pepper eating contest in person. I've seen a hot pepper eating contest on TV but those were raw jalapenos. The hot peppers at this hot pepper eating contest were actually hot Italian peppers which I'm told are HOT but...they also cook them. They each had to eat a pound of the cooked peppers which looked pretty slimmy. Ewwww! They were timed as to how fast each of them could down their pound of peppers. Ewwww! The crowd roared and cheered and drank beer. I suspect the enjoyment of watching this pepper eating thing has more to do with the beer but...that may just be me. On the plus side, I got to enjoy a bag of those tiny donuts that they sell at the fair, and I also enjoyed some cotton candy. Yummy! Oh...and I had a beer, but not until the taste of the donuts and the cotton candy had a chance to clear my palate. I do have some standards. I'm not sure who won the hot pepper eating contest. There was one guy who had eaten his peppers in 12 seconds, which was the fastest time when HTP and I decided that it was time to leave. It's not that we weren't enjoying watching the whole thing and all but...after seeing ten or twelve people down cooked hot peppers...well...you've pretty much seen it. They all pretty much used the same technique...and both hands. Ewwww!!!! However, it didn't ruin HTP and my appetites for dinner. Prime rib at the Prime Bar. Yummm!!!

We didn't get any frost last night. It did get pretty cold. 40 degrees when I woke up. I'm told that it's supposed to get even colder tonight. I'm waffling over whether or not to cover the plants out on my deck tonight. Frost in August? Have you noticed that it's become Global Climate Change instead of Global Warming? Regardless, after breakfast, HTP and I decided to split some more logs for the wood pile in our garage. I suspect that he wanted a fireplace fire last night because I wouldn't let him turn on the furnace but...he felt too guilty about raiding our log pile in the garage to actually light a fire. We split and loaded enough logs to fill our SideKick from top to bottom, from guggle to zatch. I don't think we could stack any more wood on our pile in the garage. Team effort. Go us! We can now have a guilt-free fire in our fireplace...well...aside from the Global Warming/Climate Change thing.

I'm starting to get enough tomatoes from my deck garden (hope and pray that we don't get frost tonight) to can some of my tomatoes. I decided to use my new steam juicer. I finally broke down and bought my own. I'd been using one that belongs to one of Sis' friends. I'm not sure if I actually liked the result. I'm used to peeling and de-seeding tomatoes and then dicing them up into quart jars before canning. What intrigued me about the steam juicer was that I didn't have to do any of that messy blanching, peeling, and de-seeding. However, the juice that came out of the juicer was almost clear and yellowish. It didn't look like tomato juice at all. Sis warned me about this but told me that the juice really does taste like tomato juice. OK. Then, I needed to toss the pulpy remains from the juicer into my high hat to press out any remaining pulp, for tomato sauce. The thing is...I'm not all that fond of tomato sauce. I like chunks in my sauce. And, quite frankly, the steam juicer and the high hat weren't all that fun to clean up, so, there's still a mess. Canning tomatoes can be a messy process no matter how you do it, and since HTP doesn't like all the chunks.... Oh well...I now I have one quart of tomato juice which they call tomato water, and I've got one quart of tomato sauce. Since I have so many jars remaining of canned tomatoes from last summer, both here and in Arizona, I decided to give this new method a try. Besides, I hear that martinis using the tomato water are very good. Kind of a bloodless Bloody Mary.

Murphyism of the Day

Schick's Lament

It is too bad that we cannot cut the patient in half in order to compare two regimens of treatment.

Noteworthy Quote of the Day

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)