Bases * Tomato Juice

Just for a start... the basic ingredients are crucial to any diet, the veggie one requires particular attention to food preservation and to the preparation of doughs. So, as many other people, I decided to cultivate a contemporary urban kitchen garden. Healthy habit with strong meditative powers, that put in touch with nature, with ourselves providing all the basic nutrients,  the vitamins and the good flavours of the Earth for a 0 mile diet.

All this sounds very complicated, but is not. Plants grow in the fields but also on terraces and balconies, and if well groomed can give some satisfations. If there is no terrace, garden or balcony available for a kitchen garden, it'll always be possible to ask the municipality if community allotment gardens are available.
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By the way, the most creative part, after the satisfactions in witnessing a small seed becoming sprout and then little plant, is food preservation.

We said we were starting from the beginning and so, that's the recipe of tomato juice preserve.

Ingredients: home grown tomatoes

Wash the ripen tomatoes, press them in the tomato press, for the skins and the seeds, bottle the juice, cork up and put the bottles and/or the jars in a big pot with a lid filled with water to cover the bottles, boil  for not less than 12 minutes, leave covered and wait till they chill. A good habit is to put the jars and the bottles upside down when out of the water before storing them in a dry and dark place.

To use for the preparation of spiced or pizza sauces.  When preserved tomatoes tend to loose the summer freshness and the sour might prevail (in case, add a pinch of sugar to the sauce while cooking) plus they steam a bit during the pasteurization, so the juice might need more spices than usual if you wish to prepare a Virgin Mary.  

Vegan.

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