Time To Clean Out The Fridge & Juice Making

The fridge has gotten so full of leftovers and other stuff that we realize we must quit cooking new dishes until we eat up or toss what we have. So for breakfast today, it was some smoked breakfast fatty, Cabot sharp cheddar and eggs on an English muffin and homemade mater juice. Not quite gourmet, but I sure like it. Have I mentioned, I like breakfast food.

Just out of the toaster oven

Added a couple of fried eggs - I hate it when I break one of the yolks

For those of you who make your own juice, our recipe is simple. I grow paste tomatoes (Kada Hybrid & Quimbaya) for canning and juicing, tossing in any extra slicing tomatoes. The paste tomatoes give a naturally thicker juice without further cooking. We just core the tomatoes, cut out bad spots, and cook until softened. I then run them through a tool that’s been around my family for 4 generations. My dad called it a ricer, but it may be a chinois. Here’s our set up.


There are likely better ways to do this, but there’s something about keeping up the tradition, not to mention the great juice, that keeps me doing it this way. There’s just no comparison between what we make and the commercial juice.

After juicing, we put into jars with one teaspoon of canning salt (complicated recipe isn’t it) and process – we use a pressure canner (12 lbs for 10 minutes) because we have one and it’s quicker than water bath canning.

The finished product - delicious and healthy