Tomato, Tomatoes

I love canning.

I love everything about it.

I really enjoy getting the canning jars all cleaned and then seeing how many canning rings that I have to have. Will I need all small jar lids or maybe a couple of the wide mouth lids? I love to get whatever I’m canning (usually tomatoes) ready on the countertop and then the excitement that I get when you start the process. 

OK, if you’ve never canned before well it’s really hard to explain the thrill that you get when you hear the ping of the jars sealing. I swear I can be way in the other part of the house or even upstairs and all of a sudden you stop (not sure why, you can’t hear any better if you stop and listen can you?) well anyway I stop and once I hear the ping I smile to myself and then get on to whatever I’m doing. OK, maybe kinda dorky but it’s what I do. 

So once I again I’ve been canning tomato juice and I sure wished I knew what recipe I used last year because I was really struggling to figure out how I was going to put this whole thing together this year. So I was lucky to have the onions, basil, peppers, celery, parsley, chives from my garden, and after they were all process in my handy dandy food processor, I then I added some carrots to the whole mixture. I put in some sugar and some salt and pepper to taste. I left it cook for about an hour to let the ingredients all mix and then I used the strainer thing to get all the juice out of it. And guess what? It’s not bad. Maybe not repeatable again because it was just a guess on how much to add, but not a bad juice! 

Now to start on to the second kettle. I sure wished I wrote down what I used in the first one. 

And once all the jars are sealed and have been washed, for some odd reason I just can’t store them away in the basement right away. I keep them out for a day or two just to look at them. It’s kind of like looking at a prize or something that you get for doing a job well done. 

Well I finally moved them to the basement and on to my next kitchen activity 🙂