Canning Is Not For Sissies

Friday marked the first day of canning for me and a couple of friends.  We started with tomato sauce from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which tastes fantastically delicious. 

The first step in canning is to boil down the tomatoes until they are soft and then run them through the squeezo to remove all the seeds and the skin.  Believe it or not, this is not as easy as you would think and Sooz and I almost broke out into a sweat while processing the tomatoes into juice.

Canning is not for sissies - we broke out in an almost sweat

Next we made the sauce (delicious):

10 quarts tomato puree

(about 30 lbs. tomatoes)

4 large onions

1 cup dried basil

½ cup honey

4 tbs. dried oregano

3 tbs. salt

2 tbsp ground lemon peel

2 tbsp. thyme

2 garlic cloves

2 tbs. dried parsley

2 tsp. pepper

2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp nutmeg

Soften onions and garlic in a heavy 3-gallon kettle – add a small amount of water if necessary but no oil if you are canning (very important!). Add pureed tomatoes and all seasonings, bring to a boil, and simmer on low heat for two to three hours until sauce has thickened to your liking. Stir frequently, especially toward the end, to avoid burning. Meanwhile, heat water in canner bath, sterilize jars in boiling water or dishwasher, and pour boiling water over jar lids.
Add 2 tbsp of lemon juice per jar.  This is ensures that the sauce will be safely acidic. When the sauce is ready, ladle it into the jars leaving ½ inch headspace. Put jars into canner and boil for 35 minutes. Remove, cool, check all seals, label and store for winter.

Pouring the sauce into jars

After the sauce boiled down, we poured them into jars and added to a water bath canner and pressure canner to preserve the sauce and after about 40 minutes - done!     Kristy Harrison is the master canner who helps guide us through the process and this year Meghan Droessler and Jeanine Connell joined in on the fun. What a great day!

Yes, making tomato sauce is a lot work but if you buy tomato sauce in the store and it's not organic, you are buying a product FULL of pesticides and the tomato sauce cans (if not organic) still contain BPA.   I do believe it's worth the extra effort and what a great excuse to spend 8 hours with some amazing women friends.

I'm drying parsley today.  To preserve parsley, lay on the counter until completely dry (up to 24 hours).  Once dry, add parsley to a paper bag and tape the bag in the fridge so the parsley hangs upright.  Parsley is a moist herb and the flavor does not hold if you simply hang it upside down.  I've been storing my dried herbs in glass jars and they look so beautiful.

Parsley

Tomorrow is the big Packer game which means tailgating so I'm trying to prepare as best as I can since Green Bay is not exactly next door (4 1/2 hours).    Regardless, it should be a FANTASTIC day.  Go Packers.

Do you have any tailgating ideas?

Thanks for reading,

Kristin

• Download the Recipe PDF