Look at all these beautiful tomatoes from the garden.  We are running out of room on the dining room table.  

 

So, what's next?  Canning.  What a perfect activity for a rainy day.

 

We blanched and peeled the tomatoes, sautéed onion, green pepper, celery, and garlic.  Then dumped it all into a great big pot, added dried oregano, basil, thyme, and some fennel seeds, all from the garden.  No, wait!  Everything but the celery and onion were from the garden.  Cooked it all down for a couple hours:  now, we have a great big pot of tomato sauce!!!

 

Now the fun starts.  We washed and heated up pint jars to 180 degrees.  Then filled them and put them in the pressure canner.  Jon has the job of watching the gauge, because I tend to walk away from stuff, and that's not a good plan with a pressure canner, (or many other kitchen projects.)  Our canner holds 9 pints, so we had to do it twice.  

 

We ended up with 16 pints of delicious tomato sauce.  Now I know what you are going to say.  Why didn't you just use 8 quart jars?  We have done that in the past, but have found that it takes us too long to USE a whole quart of sauce, and a pint jar is just the right amount for many of my recipes.  I have a great tomato soup recipe that I will add to the recipe section.  It uses 2 pints of tomatoes and a pint of tomato sauce.  

 

HAPPY DAYS IN THE KITCHEN!!!