Making Enormous Amounts of Tomato Sauce on The Real Housewives of New Jersey

Say what you will about New Jersey, but as evidenced by The Real Housewives of New Jersey, it's go big or go home. From the premiere of season two: Once a year, the Giudice family throws down, making an enormous batch of red sauce with cases and cases of roma tomatoes and an industrial grinder, generating 180 jars' worth of sauce to last all year.

Cooking with the kids! It's a noble and fun family project, but it also gives the grandma the opportunity to teach the young daughters their place in the world, telling them, "You marry and then you do the tomatoes, eh?" Later, Teresa Giudice informs us of a bizarre old-world custom that they still practice: "Old-school Italians believe that if it's that time of the month, you're not allowed to make red sauce, because they say that you could spoil the tomatoes."

Also, we love Bravo for promoting Teresa Giudice's cookbook with pop-up onscreen graphics.

Video: Making Tomato Sauce