Tomatoes awaited!

We came home to a bunch of tomatoes in the garden! So we canned! 17 quarts of pasta sauce ready for winter!

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Serious Applesauce making!

After my first little dabble in applesauce making, I could barely wait to dive in deeper!   So off we went to a local farm.  While I would much prefer to buy totally organic, I settled this time for a farm that practices Integrated Pest Management.  They were referred to us by a local organic restaurant that trusts their practices.  Not my ideal, but I absolutely couldn't wait to try this!   While they didn't have the orchard open that day for picking from the trees, the kids still enjoyed picking out of the bins and filling up our boxes via their bags.  We ended up with four bushels of apples - three for us and one for my friend who was going to share in this experience.  :)

My father-in-law was kind enough to dig out the old galvanized tin buckets on stands from the barn for me.  I gave them a good washing and then filled them up with water and lots of apple cider vinegar for a nice bath for the apples.  The boys enjoyed agitating them.  They are good at agitating.  Lots of practice.  ;)

Next, we cut up the apples into about eighths and threw them into big pots.  The big boys helped with this step, too.

There's my bestie stirring up her brew.  :)

And then we ladled the soft apples into the mill to turn it into applesauce!  We tried two methods - the first was using an old food mill that my FIL got out for us.  It worked quite nicely - especially since one of the boys was the one cranking the handle!   The other option we used was an attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer - that certainly made things go quickly and I'm not sure I'd like to be without it for doing these large batches!

Here are the attachments I used:

   

We only made it through two bushels of apples.  I'm sure we'll get much better the more we do it!  :)

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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!!

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