Wednesday, September 21, 2011

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!

3 comments:

Laura B. said...

You are SO domestic! Seriously...I'm SO impressed!

Marie said...

This is so awesome! I had no idea you didn't like tomatoes, and I love that Emma loves them. I also could probably eat them right off the vine. So add this to the list of things you are going to have to teach me when we finally move back to the northwest!

Owlhaven said...

Yay for you!! Good job Shana!