Adventures in canning

Or is that bottling? We have had a great time with our garden this year. Peas, squash, beans, carrots, and tomatoes. Yes, especially tomatoes. While others around us were suffering the blight of a bad tomato year, we planted a little later, missed the dreaded last frost, and starting picking lovely, ripe tomatoes in early July. It left us with a great desire to bottle them ourselves this year instead of leaving it to Mom M. We called Mom P to see if we could borrow her brain, a little of her labor, and her equipment for this endeavor.

Any who, on to our adventure. So, with bowls and bag of tomatoes in hand, we headed to the Parkers' to see how many we would have to put up. We here thinking two or three batches (with 7 quarts per batch). Oh, how optimistic were we. Yes, all of our hard work yielded 6 1/2 quarts. It truly is amazing how many tomatoes it takes for one bottle, especially home-grown, smallish sized ones. Needless to say, we got it all done in about 4 hours.

We decided that we wanted more. We use the bottle tomatoes for a lot of things, like making fresh pasta sauce and a dish we call Goulash, though I know it isn't really Goulash. It's just hamburger macaroni. So, we headed to Farnsworth Farms and Cider Mill and picked almost another bushel of tomatoes. It was frustrating at first. We had a hard time finding ones that were ripe enough. It took about 30 minutes, but we filled out box, paid for the pleasure, and headed out to the folks for more fun. This time, we got a full 7 bottles, plus extra tomatoes for eating at home.

I spent most of my youthful summers peeling various types of fruit with my grandma for bottling: peaches, plums, cherries, and pears. I loved pears the most. We'd peel them with a knife and eat the peelings, which would always have a little bit of fruit on it, too. Now, we blanch the fruit or tomato, and the skins almost fall off, leaving you a beautiful piece to put in the bottle, but I do miss the times with my grandma. *sigh*

Next, I would like to do pears.