Homemade Tomato Juice – How to Do It Right

The biggest problem I have run into in making and bottling my own tomato juice is how to get the juice to not separate in the bottles. If you have ever bottled tomato juice or other puree juices, you will know what I am talking about. The thick part of the juice seems to separate from the watery part. So, how do you keep it from doing that? It can seem to be a little tricky, but it is possible. First, let’s talk a little bit about tomatoes.

Tomato plants used to be more acid. Over the years, seed growers have cross bred the tomatoes to create sweeter varieties. This has caused us to need to change the way we preserve the tomatoes so they will be safe to eat. There are different ways of preserving food that is on different parts of the acid-base scale. The more acid foods can be boiling water bath processed safely and the food will keep well in the bottles and be safe. The more alkaline foods need to be preserved in a pressure cooker if you are bottling them. Tomatoes have moved from more acid toward neutral and because of this they must be acidified when they are bottled.

It takes a lot of time and money to conduct the tests to set the processing times and methods for each food. For this reason, the Agriculture Extension Service has recommended that we acidify the tomatoes back to near what they used to be and also cook them for longer periods of time or at higher heat so they will be safe to eat right from the bottles. Many people do not heat tomatoes up right out of the bottle, and because of this they must be processed long enough to kill potential botulism spores that may be in them. Botulism toxin is odorless, tasteless, and can be deadly if ingested. If we simmer bottled food for 20 minutes after opening the bottles the toxins will be destroyed and the food will be safe to eat.

Making tomato juice will be easier if you use a food strainer sauce maker to puree the tomatoes. There are several on the market that are good and there are extra screens and spirals you can purchase to puree berries, pumpkin, and make salsa. You will also need a heavy stock pot or pan to cook your tomatoes before you puree them. Along with the sauce maker and stock pot, you will need a container to catch the tomato juice as it comes out of the sauce maker, long handled instruments for stirring, a few scrapers, and a cup or small pan to transfer the cooked tomatoes to the food strainer. To cut down on the kitchen and house mess, I like to do my juicing on my patio where I can hose it down when I am done. That way I don’t have to be so careful, but I have done it all in my kitchen in the past.

The first thing you will want to do with your ripe tomatoes is wash them. You don’t need to core them or cut them if they are small, but check them over and make sure they have no bad spots on them. The juice will only be as good as the produce you use to make it from. They key to making juice that will not separate is to get the tomatoes from the whole, raw state to the cooked state as quickly as possible. When you cut through the cells of the tomato it crushes the cell walls and starts the separation process of the juice from the pulp. The less you can cut it and the faster you heat it the better the juice will be. I begin to cook a few tomatoes in the pan while I am cutting the larger ones and I just keep adding and stirring them as I cut. You don’t want to crush by stirring too much, but you also don’t want the tomatoes to stick on the pan and burn. Cook the tomatoes until they are soft clear through. You don’t need to take the skins or cores out because they will be separated when you put them through the food strainer. Now it is time to put them through the food strainer sauce maker. When this is complete, bring your juice back to a boil, ladle it into the clean, hot bottles, add your acid and salt or other flavorings, clean the lip of the bottle and put the hot canning lid and ring on and twist on tight. You are now ready to process your tomato juice. Check with your local Agriculture extension agent for recommended amounts of acid, times and methods of processing at your altitude.. To acidify you can use citric acid or lemon juice.

Homemade tomato juice is one of my favorites. If you garden, you will want to know how to preserve those extra tomatoes for use during the cold or hot season when you can’t grow the fresh ones. Tomatoes are one of the few foods that have healthy nutrients in them that are better for you when cooked. Enjoy your glass of tomato juice or tomato soup knowing you are getting good nutrition.

Why We Need Raw Food, Especially Fruits and Vegetables

Did you know that from thirty to eighty-five percent of the nutrition in foods is destroyed in cooking? Did you know that fresh, raw foods contain the highest level of enzymes? Did you know that unless you supply enzymes for your body, the enzymes present at birth in your body will eventually run out and you will die of degenerative disease? Each of us receives a supply of enzymes at birth. This supply is not limitless; it must supply our bodies with life sustaining enzymes for our whole lives.

What are enzymes and why are they so important?

“An enzyme is a biocatalyst — something that makes something else work or work faster. Chemical reactions are generally slow things, enzymes speed them up. Without enzymes the chemical reactions that make up our life would be too slow for life as we know it. (As slow as sap running down a tree in winter). For life to manifest as we know it, enzymes are essential to speed up the reactions. We have roughly some 3000 enzymes in our bodies and that results in over 7000 enzymic reactions. Most of these enzymes derived or created from what we think of as the protein digesting enzymes. But while digestion is an important part of what enzymes do, it’s almost the absolute last function. First and foremost these body wide proteolytic (protein eating) enzymes have the following actions:

· Natural Anti-inflammatory

· Anti Fibrosis

· Blood Cleansing

· Immune System Modulating

· Virus Fighting”

William Wong N.D., Ph.D., Member World Sports Medicine Hall of Fame

Enzymes are needed for the digestion and absorption of foods as well as for the production of cellular energy. Enzymes are needed for most of the building and rebuilding that takes place constantly in our bodies. Metabolic enzymes are used by the heart, lungs, kidneys, immune system, and for brain functions; digestive enzymes convert protein, carbohydrates and fat into fuel to maintain our bodies. Requiring the body to supply digestive enzymes can reduce the supply of metabolic enzymes. Eventually, the body becomes enzyme-deficient, introducing weaknesses and disease. It is understandable that glands and major organs suffer most from enzyme deficiency.

We can prevent our bodies from depleting its own supply of enzymes by providing those enzymes in raw foods. Food enzymes will start the digestion process in the stomach, but if there are no food enzymes the body will have to produce enzymes for digestion and thereby deplete the supply of systemic enzymes.

Fresh, raw foods contain the highest level of enzymes. When we cook food it kills the enzymes, so we end up with dead food that will not replenish the enzymes we have used up in the body. From the time food is harvested the quality of the enzymes goes down. Enzymes are powerful biochemical catalysts, which speed burning or building reactions in the body according to our need. They are specialized proteins, often with long complicated names ending in -ase. Cooked food passes through the digestive tract more slowly than raw food, tends to ferment, and throws poisons back into the body. Colon cancer is second only to lung cancer as a killer in America and is related, in various ways, to eating enzyme-deficient cooked food.

"Following a strict vegetarian diet is not as important as eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. A vegetarian whose diet is mainly refined grains, cold breakfast cereals, processed health-food-store products, vegetarian fast foods, white rice, and pasta will be worse off than a person who eats a little chicken or eggs, for example, but consumes a larger amount of fruits, vegetables, and beans." Joel Fuhrman., MD, board-certified family physician specializng in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods.

Juice Fast For Weight Loss and Cleansing

Having tried juice fasting before, and having talked to others about it I chose a time when I wasn't going to have a lot of stresses in my life. I had been told that the first 3 days would be the hardest and then would get easier. The following is what I did and what I found.

For the cleanse the very most important thing is to drink often, so I set the goal of drinking a glass of something every hour. First thing in the morning is a good time to drink a full glass of lemon water. That helps the liver and the whole body cleanse. Then the next hour water, the next hour juice, then water. Every two hours I try to drink a juice or tea or vegetable broth of some kind. A variety gets you more of the nutrients your body needs. On the opposite hours I drink a glass of water. My goal is to drink 4 or 5 swallows every half hour and I often squeeze lemon into my water.

It is good to use fresh fruits and vegetables mostly so you will get enzymes as well as the vitamins and minerals your body needs. There are proteins in some of the green things as well, but that is a nutrient one has a hard time getting on a juice fast.

Another thing you don't get is fiber. Fiber is necessary to clean the bowel and because you don't get fiber on a juice fast it is recommended that you do a bowel cleanse daily. This can be done with enema, high colonic, or colon hydrotherapy. My colon Hydrotherapist told me that when you don't chew your peristalic movement in the bowel stops. The up side of this she said, is that the plaque in the bowel comes away from the walls of the large intestine. That is why you need to take the opportunity to clean it out.

One recipe for healthy fresh juice is the juice of a potato, a beet, carrots, and celery. Potato gives you potassium, beet is for the liver and gull bladder, carrots for blood sugar and energy, and celery is for sodium. This works well, and on these foods I have not found myself low in energy.

This juice fast, I have concentrated on using low sugar, low glycemic raw foods because I am trying to get rid of some candida.

It is really great to have juicers available in my home to process my raw food into juice. That way, I can juice whatever I have access to or want to eat. My citrus juicer works well to juice the lemons and grapefruit I have juiced. The wheatgrass juicer has worked great for the kale, lettuce, chard, and other leafy things. The centrifugal juicer is what I prefer for juicing the apples, carrots, beets, and peppers, onions, cucumbers, celery, and other hard fruits and vegetables. I have juiced pineapple with this juicer as well.

The hardest part of the fast has been to fix my husband and grandchild their tasty meals and then sit down to drink my glass of juice while they are eating chops and ribs and salads.

This juice fast has gone quickly. I am half through with my 21 day fast and I have lost 8 1/2 pounds and the itching from the candida is going away also.

Juice fasting is a great way to get toxins out of the body that are stored in the fat. It is great to get back on track to healthy eating and healthy living. It is great to get rid of the left over holiday weight. My friend jumpstarted his 78 LB weight loss with a juice fast. It gets you more healthy. This friend was able to get off all 3 diabetes medicines and the high blood cholesterol medicine he had been taking and his blood looks really good. I would recommend a juice fast for anyone who wants to feel better and get healthy.

Food Helps For A Healthy Body

My Cousin D sent this to me a year before he passed away. I just love it. I think whole food is the best way to go for good health. There are some people who don't believe in the creation and all that it means, but I do.

GOD first separated the salt water from the fresh, made dry land, planted a garden, made animals and fish... all before making a human. HE made and provided what we would need before we were born. These are best, and more powerful when eaten raw.

GOD left us a great clue as to what foods help what part of our body!

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye... and YES, science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart has four chambers and is red. All of the research shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopine and are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.

A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds on the nut are just like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than three (3) dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys. Note: Parsley is good for the kidneys.

C elery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and many more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23 % sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you do not have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

Avocados, Eggplant and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? It takes exactly nine (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the mobility of male sperm and increase the numbers of Sperm as well to overcome male sterility. Note: bananas and cucumbers are also good for the male genitals.

Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics. Note: Cinnamon is also good for balancing blood sugar.

Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries. Note: Pomegranets are good for the ovaries also.

Oranges, Grapefruits, and other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female, and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like the body's cells. Today's research shows onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes. A working companion, Garlic, also helps eliminate waste materials and dangerous free radicals from the body. Note: Pineapple is also good for the cells and the skin of the pineapple looks like cells look under a microscope.

Note: The juice of a potato is good for lung and bronchial problems.

Lemons are good to help the liver and clean out toxins.