canning

Summer came and went!! How does that happen so quickly? Does time seem to be speeding up for everyone??

I think time goes quickly when you are busy! And let me tell you, we were BUSY this summer! Between the garden, everyone working, the animals, getting wood supply in for the winter… time just went by!!

I’ve had people ask me how to can things, or how do I process certain veggies etc. Well people, let me tell you, I keep things super easy and uncomplicated! In no way would I have the time, or energy, to process things like tomatoes in many different ways… delicious or not! I do sauce… plain old sauce. No muss no fuss, no spices, no fanfare, just sauce.

Well, you may ask, what sort of tomatoes are best for sauce? Frankly, I don’t care! Well, I do, but I don’t have time to obsess over tomato varieties! We did grow our own Roma’s this year, which were amaaaaazinnnngggg!

and I do prefer them for sauce, maybe because they are sauce tomatoes… ha! But, I digress, I don’t have time to worry about it! We get a lot of tomatoes in payment for work we do on a local farm. If those rows are going to get plowed under I get a call, “come pick tomatoes”. We bring the truck and we pick, and pick, and pick… you get the picture. Doesn’t matter what variety they are, we don’t care!

I adore, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, my husband. For many reasons 🙂 one of which being he had the foresight, many years back, to get me a juicer attachment for my Kitchenaid.

What a game changer that baby is when you are processing massive amounts of tomatoes!! It takes the skin and seeds out lickety split!

I bring the tomatoes up to a boil, dump into a strainer, then start juicing baby!

I tend to run everything through twice to get as much pulp as possible! Then the juice/pulp all goes into a big pot that I bring up to almost a boil and I start processing! Super easy, fill hot jars with hot sauce, add 1 tsp canning salt, wipe rims, cap, process at 10 lbs of pressure for 15 min. Done! We will do upwards of 30 Quarts a day.