Tomato -TomATo

A couple of years ago the neighbors were having a garage sale and I bought a few boxes of her old jars off of her. (Two huge boxes for $2!). This is the first year I was able to actually get the time to try some canning. I consulted with my SIL Jodie (the queen of all things canned) and got the directions. I figured I'd try tomatoes first since they seem like they're kinda easy to do.

It was much easier than I thought. It's a pretty sweaty process because you have all these pots of water and tomatoes cooking all over. But once you get coordinated it was pretty straightforward. I think the hardest part was getting the skin off of the tomatoes.

Bob brought home a few tomatoes from the local roadside stand and after I prepared them, I cooked em up with onion, tomato and garlic. (What a way to spend a Saturday night!) Of those tomatoes, I ended up with a total of two quarts and two pints. (Last picture). After that I went back to our local roadside stand and purchased a BOX of canning tomatoes. The lady working at the stand told me that you don't need perfect tomatoes for canning. Apparently, "canning tomatoes" can have a few a big box of tomatoes. I spent part of Sunday canning more. This time I attempted salsa. Of course we don't know how it tastes because we haven't tried it yet and I didn't have a 'recipe'. So I just sorta made it up. Jalapenos, red onion, green onion, garlic, garlic salt, pepper.. I don't think ya can screw up salsa that bad right? I figure if it's not good we can throw it in as spaghetti sauce or into a pot of chili right?

Today I am going to attempt to complete the rest of the box! Now to figure out where to store everything! I am also thinking I'm gonna give apple sauce a shot... any suggestions?