Same sauce, different decade.

No wonder it works. On a whim, I find on a Google search that my Squeezo Strainer is still being manufactured. It’s a (still!) all-metal, (still!) hand-crank device which takes whole tomatoes and pours beautiful fresh sauce out one end and skin and seeds out the other. Simple, and from that you can cook down the best tomato sauce you’ll ever eat which in turn makes the best pasta sauce and world’s best chili. The Bloody Marys are another story. Internet tells me that this thing was made first in America in 1907 by some kid from Italy hungry for sauce. Like I said, no wonder it works. No motivation like the savory garlic simmer of a pot of sauce.

I suspect that, like me, each generation is somewhat ego centric, convinced of living in not only the center of the universe but the peak of importance. Or perhaps it was just me, my generation being so sure of our revolution of thinking and social change. In the midst of it all, 1979, I cut the order form from Mother Earth News, mailed a check to Troy, N.Y., and awaited my Squeezo. I was immersed in the cutting edge of sustainable earth, self-sufficient gardening. I lined my 100 quart jars of perfectly canned tomato sauce up next to jars of apple sauce, pickles, chutneys, salsas, beans, and corn, alongside bins of dried plums, apples, strawberries, and tomato rings, fanned bunches of dried herbs overhead. Potatoes, beets, peas, and squash safe in the root cellar.

Decades later, two states to the north, I share the Squeezo each year with my neighbor. I pulled 120 lb of roma tomatoes off of 8 plants this year, a good number for me and my new climate. I’d get a better harvest if I moved the whole garden. That little seedling that came home with my 6-year-old on Arbor Day is now 50 feet high and casts a mean shade. But my 12 quarts of sauce is plenty, and the last of the green tomatoes are ripening in a basket in my kitchen. What I thought was the only way to live turned out to be just one way, but my style remains. The certainty of my 20’s turned out to be the shape of things to come. How naturally today I turn to Google to research my Squeezo, the internet being a concept unheard of in 1979 and irrelevent in 1907. And still, how naturally hungry we all are for a great tomato sauce.

I have one issue left of Mother Earth News, August 1983, the end of my attempted self-sufficient farming. Tonight, no great surprise to find the publication online, with some great tips on ripening green tomatoes. Nothing really changes, just the messenger.