Canning Tomatoes - My First Experience

Now that we are living in the country, canning is just one more of those "country living" activities that I've been itching to try!  I scored a half-bushel of "seconds" tomatoes from a good farmer on Sunday for just $5, so off to Pinterest I went!  I ended up mostly following the directions from PickYourOwn.org.  They had such nice pictures to go along with the text, and I'm a visual learner, so that worked nicely.  I only did two things differently.  First, I don't have a lid lifter - instead, I used this handy tool I got from Amazon:



I loved that I could have the lids stacked in this thing ready to go - and when I was close to being ready to use them, I just put the whole thing down in a pot of boiling water and could lift the whole thing back out right next to my jars for easy access.

The second thing I did (or didn't do) is something I hope I won't regret!  I didn't have any lemon juice.  I had real lemons, but everything I read said to use bottled lemon juice.  After speaking with a friend who said she never uses it at all, I decided to proceed without it.  Apparently it's supposed to help with not allowing bacteria to grow - so I guess I'll just make a point to use these jars up first!  ;)

I used the Granite Ware 21-1/2-Quart Water-Bath Canner on my glass-top cookstove despite all the warnings about not doing so.  I tested first to make sure that it could bring the pot to a boil, and it did so fine, so I went ahead.  The bottom of this pot is not flat, but it was still able to make enough contact to get the job done!  Yay!  I bought two of the pot sets and they will actually fit side by side on my stove! Double yay!

A huge lesson learned for me stems from my concern about the water taking too long to come to a boil. I pre-heated the water to boiling before putting my filled jars in, and when I did that, one of my jars cracked.  Oh how sad to see all those tomatoes floating in my water.  :(  I'm grateful it was just one of the 7 jars!

Well, I've got the canning bug now!  I can't wait to can something else!!