I had every intention of posting about a little bracelet I made yesterday but well - I got sidetracked. This morning I ran to the farm stand on the corner (next to a fireworks store p.s.) and they were picking through the produce to throw things away. To my complete horror they were about to take an entire BOX of tomatoes to the dumpster. I told the girl I would take them and the peaches that were looking a little rough in the front and she said sure. People, tomatoes are .99 a pound there and peaches are $1.29 a pound. I got 4lbs. of peaches and a box of tomatoes for $2.00. Yup. I was a happy girl. I even posted a picture of my treasure on Instagram. My excitement also came with a realization - cleaning was suddenly knocked down a few pegs on the big ol' To Do List. I had tomatoes to can! Since I hadn't bought any of the ingredients to make salsa and the tomatoes were all different kinds, I decided it was a sauce kind of day.
Before you do anything, get your canning water on the stove to boil since it takes FOREVER. I cored and cut the tomatoes and threw them into a pot to simmer. I mashed them with a potato masher and just kept on cutting and adding tomatoes until my pot was full. I used an 8 qt. pot and it was full to the brim. After simmering the tomatoes for about 20 minutes and making sure they were easy to mash, I got the food processor out. You don't have to use it, you could just mash some more, but I want to get every bit of tomato goodness out of my tomatoes so I use the food processor.
Spoon batches of the tomatoes into the food processor and blend away. Strain out the seeds and remaining skin, really working to make sure you get all the tomato goodness and put it back into a pot. It took me about five batches to finish processing the entire pot of tomatoes. After all was said and done I had about 5 qts of tomato "sauce" that needed to be cooked. Simmer the sauce until it is reduced by almost half. Get your jars ready (nice and hot - I use the dishwasher) and add 1 tbsp of lemon juice to each pint jar. My sauce reduced to the point of filling five pint jars and one 1/2 pint jar. Ladle the sauce into the jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. Clean the jars, add the lids and get them into the boiling water to process. Pint jars take about 35 minutes to process. Take them out of the pot to cool and make sure they are sealed.
Spoon batches of the tomatoes into the food processor and blend away. Strain out the seeds and remaining skin, really working to make sure you get all the tomato goodness and put it back into a pot. It took me about five batches to finish processing the entire pot of tomatoes. After all was said and done I had about 5 qts of tomato "sauce" that needed to be cooked. Simmer the sauce until it is reduced by almost half. Get your jars ready (nice and hot - I use the dishwasher) and add 1 tbsp of lemon juice to each pint jar. My sauce reduced to the point of filling five pint jars and one 1/2 pint jar. Ladle the sauce into the jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. Clean the jars, add the lids and get them into the boiling water to process. Pint jars take about 35 minutes to process. Take them out of the pot to cool and make sure they are sealed.
I love that I made a batch of sauce that cost me about $1.50. I don't love that I still have a dirty house and my kitchen looks worse than when I started. I guess I better get to cleaning ... later.
