Seeds of Potential: Home Canning

Last week I did something I swore to my mother that I would never EVER do-- I canned tomatoes!

As a child, my lazy summers were always interrupted in August for the dreaded canning of tomatoes with my mother. The arrival of 5 gallon buckets filled with tomatoes from a great uncle were always the signal of the laborious and messy chore to come.

See. I hated tomatoes when I was a kid and I especially hated the hand-crank food mill that we used to puree the tomatoes because I would end up with *disgusting* tomato juice all over me. ECK!

In response to my whining and groaning about helping with the annual project, my mother would assure me of the value of learning this skill so that, I too, could preserve my own produce one day. To her, I told her emphatically that I would NEVER EVER stoop so low as canning my own food.

Fast forward 15 or so years and here I am, pots overflowing, tomatoes in my sink (!! another huge thing for a sink-a-phobe like me), and hot jars covering my countertops.

Thanks to my local CSA, I was able to “put up” (smacks of the frontier or depression era, doesn’t it?) 16 quarts and 16 pints of whole or crushed tomatoes.

My favorite method was to blend the de-stemmed tomatoes, fresh, in my all-purpose NINJA (perhaps more on this versatile kitchen gadget later?). The consistency is a lot like diced tomatoes from the can. Next, I ladled the tomatoes into warm jars with a little lemon juice and then boiled them in water for maybe 30 minutes.

One thing I realized is that canning takes more tomatoes than you would ever think. I used two big buckets and could have done even more.

Overall, it was a satisfying experience and my goal is to not have to buy any diced or crushed tomatoes at the store this year. This would be pretty major since we use a lot of tomatoes for cooking soups and pasta.

Here are some pictures:

Start to finish of canning whole tomatoes. This was more labor intensive with the extra step of blanching and peeling the tomatoes.