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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>  >Do you freeze them whole or quartered until
> you're ready to use ... in January?
> 

Here's a bit we discovered and have used it for three years with good results:

Put whole tomatoes in the freezer.  Tennis ball sized coreless ones work the 
best, but this still works for any tomato.  No need to protect from freezer 
burn, they aren't going to be in there that long an the skin protects them.  
Put 
them on a cookie sheet and when they are frozen like rocks, put them in a 
large plastic bag.

In the winter, as has been pointed out,  when there is welcome heat from the 
stove, put the tomatoes in a collander with a bowl underneath and let the 
thaw.  You get a straw colored juice collecting in the bowl and the tomatoes 
disintegrate into paste.  Run the resulting paste through a sieve or Victorio 
or 
such, or as we do, run it through a blender or Vita-Mix and obliterate the 
skin 
and seeds into paste themselves.

Add a little salt and spoonful of vinegar and you have tomato thick tomato 
sauce or thin tomato paste.  Add some of the drippings back to make thinner 
sauce, boil it down a bit for thicker paste, or .... add ALL the drippings 
back 
for thick tomato juice, juice that tastes more like fresh tomatoes than 
anything 
you've had.

The constraint of this method is the freezer space.  We have an old chest 
freezer that is not kept cold all the time, mostly it is used to chill down 
meat 
after slaugher and before butchering.  But it can be brought online if there 
are lots of tomatoes and hold them until we want to process them.

As I went to milk this morning there were there gigantic deer by the cow 
shed.  It was tempting, but we really don't need the meat so .... later.


James   </HTML>