How To “Can” Tomatoes and More

When I married a Southern boy, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into I think it’s funny that we have a huge garden, but my hubby doesn’t eat a single vegetable from it! He’s a farmer, but he loves his meat and potatoes. I think he should start growing tomatoes and raising cattle!!!

This past weekend my dear friend Megan and I took on the grand task of CANNING! I have canned tomatoes once before, but this my friends was a whole new ball game.

We had over 30+pounds of tomatoes and veggies that we had to make good use of!!!

Easiest way to get the skin off of tomatoes is BLANCHING THEM! You just drop them in boiling water for 30 seconds to a minute take out with a slotted spoon and dump them in a big bowl of ice cold water (with ice in it). The skin falls right off! This is how you get the skin off of peaches as well.

I bought this wonderful Ball Jar Home canning kit from Fresh & Easy. As well as half pint and full pint Ball jars.

It was so great have a friend help in the kitchen. It cut the prep time in half and when friends have fun kitchen toys, like a mandolin (Christmas wish list) it makes it a lot easier to cut up veggies!

We had a ton of cucumbers we pickled.

As well as banana peppers and jalapenos.

If you think canning is overwhelming, don’t be frightened! It’s actually quite simple. We just followed recipes from a few different canning cookbooks and boiled the jars in big pots of hot water. I promise if I can do it, you can do it!

This, my friends, was only half of all the wonderful things we canned.

…and of course homemade fresh tomato garlic spaghetti sauce!

The best part of all of this is, we plan to give most of it away! Hello homemade Christmas gifts!!! It’s the gift that keeps on giving. We still have more pumpkin and veggies, so I plan on making pumpkin butter and more marinara.

Questions:
Have you ever canned before?
Do you have a garden?