Question About Family Story of Home Canning

[Nyboy]

While cleaning out a store room at my parents house, I found a hand bottle caper. Which bought back memoirs of a story my father would tell of growing up. My father was the youngest of 13, growing up during the depression. My grandparents had very little money, but the family always ate because of the garden. While they lived on a small city lot, they had a large garden a few blocks away on city land. My father had to water the garden every day, there was no water so he had to fill large drums and haul it to the garden. In summer it was hot backbreaking work. But the job he hated most was when the tomatoes came in. All year everyone collected soda bottles from the trash (they where glass then,) My father said my grandmother would boil them in a large pot, someone would cut all the tomatoes in to pieces. My father would cut a long straight stick from the hedges, them use the stick to push tomatoes pieces threw the small mouth of the bottle. He had to do this all day. My grandmother would then cap the bottles using the machine I found, then would cook (can). My father swears the tomatoes where raw. My question is can raw tomatoes be cooked in bottle to form a sauce like ketchup ? The finish product had to be able to flow out of small opening of soda bottle.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It won't be a thick sauce like ketchup. It would be a runny liquid with strings of tomatoes in them. I assume they were peeled, cored, and probably cut into pretty small pieces. I'd think cutting into small pieces would be a critical part of the process.

Try peeling, coring, and cutting a few tomatoes into small pieces and cooking them for a while. You will lose liquid through evaporation but you will see how much liquid tomatoes release when cooked, maybe using vine-ripened home-grown tomatoes instead of the cardboard they sell at the store.

I've never heard of doing that but it makes sense. With high acid tomatoes that's similar to water bath, not pressure canning.

 

[Nyboy]

Thanks my grandmother would save a penny any way she could. She grew up in Italy so a lot of her ways are from Italian peasants.

 

[Ridgerunner]

My folks grew up during the great depression. Dad never threw away any scrap of cut lumber, no, matter how small or useless. He straightened and reused a lot of very rusty nails. Any scrap of hardware, no matter how twisted or rusted, was kept. There were panes of glass leaning against buildings. That especially worried me because my nephews and nieces were playing out there.

When he died my brother and I cleaned out an outbuilding he used as a storeroom. It was almost empty by the time we finished. You could hardly walk in it when we started. Some of that wood was so dried out it would split if you tried to drill a hole in it, let alone drive a nail. We had a nice bonfire and hauled a lot of stuff to the dump.

Peasants, which we were the equivalent, do know how to reuse things very well and don't waste money, but people raised in the depression really had that ingrained.

 

[journey11]

That's an awesome bit of family history, Nyboy. How's about that for making do? Probably came out something more like diced tomatoes and they'd be squishy enough to come out.

 

[Nyboy]

I have the bottle caper not going to get rid of it.

 

[digitS']

Thanks my grandmother would save a penny any way she could. She grew up in Italy so a lot of her ways are from Italian peasants.

I have wondered if Americans in general can credit Italian Americans with an increase in life-expectancy in recent generations. By several months ... a year ... or two ...

Not all that long ago, vegetables were not much valued in the American diet. (I blame the British .) I'm not even sure that ours was a meat and potatoes diet. It was more like meat and bread.

Fortunately, some of our immigrant groups didn't pay much attention to this bias. Zucchini, broccoli, escarole ... . Can you imagine how ridiculous it was that the quintessential garden fruit - the tomato - had to be discovered by the people of the United States in Italian cooking?!

@hoodat once talked about "spaghetti parties" during the 1950's. I can easily remember when the first pizza parlor came to town - yep. Town of 20,000 and no pizza within 100 miles ...

The medical research supporting the benefits of a "Mediterranean Diet" is substantial and continuing!

I remember reading a study of the diets of American children that was done not too long ago. For something like one-third of our teenagers, vegetable and fruit consumption would fall below a single serving per day if the tomatoes on pizza were not counted. I think that shows how far we have still to go.

Steve

 

[baymule]

Neat family story Nyboy. My parents were raised in the depression. My dad's father was a sharecropper and they were poorer than poor. My dad would drag scrap lumber, have me take it apart and straighten the nails. I blame my scrounging skills on my childhood ......

 

[Just-Moxie]

My family depression stories are vastly different. Mama was from the Ozarks in MO. Her daddy was an alcoholic.....so he didn't make much out of earning a living anyway. Their little family eaked out a living by being off season caretakers at a Scout Camp somewhere up by Neosho MO.
Daddy's family- G'pa was a Rock Island Railroader back then. I think he must have had a good job. Even though there were 4 boys to feed by that time.

 

[Nyboy]

The nail straightening seems to be a theme to all depression era people