Tomatoes, Tomatoes Tomatoes!
Posted by: TammyI haven’t posted in a bit but it’s not because I’ve been sitting on my laurels. I have been so busy with canning! Granted, I’m pretty new to canning as I’ve only been doing it for about three years but I have never put up as much as I did this year. I know that finding that site I previously mentioned (www.pick-you-own.org) has put me onto a bevy of farms where I can increase my supply of fruits and vegetables which has definitely led me to can more. I am also trying to insure the least expensive and most healthy options I can for filling our three growing boys.
One of the farms that I found this year has PYO (Pick Your Own) tomatoes and peppers. They offered four types of tomatoes at only $1/lb; plum, big boys, grape and yellow grape. They also had PYO peppers for only .85/lb. I only bought the Italian style cooking peppers for spaghetti sauce but they had a variety of peppers from mild to VERY hot.
The boys enjoyed picking tomatoes and got a bit carried away. I ended up with nearly 120 lbs of tomatoes!
It took me an entire weekend to prepare and can all of those tomatoes but we made it a family affair with the boys helping slip skins and cutting onions, peppers and tomatoes and later helping get the air out and put on lids. I always handle the more dangerous parts like putting jars in and out of the water bath and the detail-oriented parts like setting the lids and bands.
In the end, we made over 20 quarts of spaghetti sauce and 40 pints of salsa! Here is my dining room table loaded with most of the jars before they went into the pantry.
Everything is now labeled and on the pantry shelves. We all love going down to the pantry and seeing those pretty jars with all their varied colors sitting. It does satisfy that desire I have to stash and store for the cold winter days. We’ll enjoy locally grown and available fresh fruits and vegetables until then and save the canned goods until the our growing season ends.