We Canned!

We did it!  The kids and I successfully canned tomatoes.  It was actually pretty easy, but it took all day due to letting the tomatoes cook down quite a bit.  We did two batches...diced, then pureed for spaghetti sauce.

As I implied the other day, I don't even like tomatoes.  Actually, that's not quite accurate.  I loathe raw tomatoes.  They are from the devil.  Brian feels pretty much the same way.

However, many things that I cook and love have tomatoes in them.  So I go through canned tomatoes pretty quickly.

Emma loves raw tomatoes.  She ate one right off the vine and slipped into a euphoric bliss.  "Mom!  This is the SWEETEST tomato I have ever eaten!  For my birthday, you can just give me a tomato!"

Whose child is she?  

 Here is most of our bounty.  We went back out for another (smaller) load a bit later.  We still have lots of green tomatoes on the vine, so hopefully we will get another batch done before frost.

The funny thing is, I was planning on going to thrift stores in the morning to find canning jars / supplies.  Then on a whim I looked in my garage and discovered I had everything - giant pot, jars, lids, rings...I was set!

Emma was a great helper.  She got some major Home-Ec done that day!

Even Isaiah could help peel the tomatoes.  

At one point we had three pots of tomato puree simmering, and a fourth pot doing the canning.

My only other canning experience was in 2005 when I basically watched my mom and grandma can pickled asparagus (yum!).  I felt so grown up doing this all on my own.

The finished product!  Woo hoo!  Two of the big jars didn't seal, so I put them in the fridge and ended up using them yesterday to make my first-ever from-scratch spaghetti sauce.  All ingredients were from our garden - except the beef - that came from the store.  Yum!