I just have a regular old Cuisineart immersion blender. Nothing fancy. But it does the job. If you read many of my "how do you do it" type of posts, you'll find that I use my immersion blender A LOT. When I do paste type tomatoes, I tend to remove the seeds - after I peel and core, I cut the tomato in half, and with my thumb, I flick the seeds out. I don't get all the seeds, but lots of them. Then again, I typically use the paste tomatoes when I'm making marinara. I leave the seeds in with my slicer tomatoes - I've switched over and now do mostly diced tomatoes with my slicers. I can't figure out any way to get the seeds out, but still have the "diced" tomatoes. If I strain the tomatoes, I end up with more of a sauce consistency that I personally do not like. Here is a link that might be useful: Immersion Blender

I tried (I really did) to convert Annie's measurements to weight. I have an old colander that holds eight cups of chopped tomatoes (as best I can determine) and weighed four different batches for salsa. Weights ranged from 3 lbs. 8 ozs. to over 5 pounds, so I just gave up...if I go back to the "just fill the colander, slightly mounded up" method, I get 7 pints of salsa spot on every time. DH doesn't appreciate that, because there is never any left over for him to eat (and he's not allowed to taste along the way, because there wouldn't be any left to put in the jars).

Hilde was a busy bee with my canner... Sunday she brought it back with V8 juice, ketchup, chili con carne, pizza sauce, etc! It even came back cleaner than when she took it! I still have a gallon of puree frozen at a friend's house, plus everything in the basement freezer still. Plus plants are still producing. Maybe next up will be the tomato garlic soup. I asked the puree volume question (also see this thread: Is this pizza sauce recipe for canning safe? to 2 different places, one was that edu canning site (Elizabeth Andress/National Center for HFP) and the other was Ball/Jarden. Since the one has a Confidentially Disclaimer, I'll post Ball's reply below; basically, I asked this: > question -> I processed in an electric tomato strainer (Spremy) an unknown amount of homegrown heirloom tomatoes. The Spremy removes the skin & seeds and delivers a puree-like juice.... I have 8 gallons of this, fresh and uncooked in any way, some refrigerated and some frozen. How would I adapt volume (gallons, quarts, etc) to your recipes which are often based on pounds or cups of tomatoes? I would like to make pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, V8 type juice, etc, but don't know how much of this puree/juice to use when your recipes call for pounds or bushels or cups of tomatoes. Ball's reply, to me, sounds like you prep/measure the puree based on the final yield. Here's their reply: Thank you for your message. For pizza and spaghetti sauce: puree tomatoes, cook pulp (puree) until it is reduced by one-half. Measure 7 quarts (or volume equal to recipe yield) and add other ingredients as instructed in recipe, process according to recipe. For juice: puree tomatoes, measure 7 quarts (or volume equal to recipe yield) and add other ingredients as instructed in recipe, process according to recipe. We hope this is helpful and appreciate you contacting us. Sincerely, Consumer Affairs Jarden Home Brands

Basically what you are making is quarts of tomato sauce and doing it correctly except for the issue of the peels and seeds and that is a gray area that boils down to your choice. The reason for the recommendation is that a) the peels are the primary source of bacteria and potential contaminants - remove them and you reduce the bacterial count significantly. Leave them and if properly acidified and processed it is safe. So it's a marginal safety issue. And b) the seeds if left can often impart a bitterness to the taste of the sauce if left. I remove them, others do not. Your choice. Try some small batch without the seeds and peels and see if you note the difference. OK? Dave