Like drinking a vine-ripe tomato

The tomato harvest has begun.  In an effort to clear the decks (i.e. my breakfast bar), I decided to juice the current crop, using my super-duper Roma Food Strainer and Sauce Maker.

Talk about easy peasy!  Put the thing together (like most things, it gets easier after the first time), wash and stem the tomatoes (I cored them a bit, too), fill the hopper, crank the crank, and presto!  Tomato juice!

Seriously, it is that easy.  No peeling, no cooking, no Foley Food Mill to wrestle with.  Ten pounds of tomatoes filled five 1.5-pint jars, which I put in the freezer.

There was a little left over, which I drank.  My first reaction:  this does not taste like tomato juice from the store.  My second reaction: it tastes much better!  Up next:  my own V8.

In other news, my SO and I trimmed the privet - a much easier job than last year - and trucked the trimmings to the biosolids site, returning with our final load of mulch for the year.  It did not quite stretch to cover everything that remained to be mulched, but close enough.