and this weekend we took Anna to her new apartment in St. Paul where she will live while attending Grad School at St. Catherine's for Physical Therapy. But we're not bored yet. The garden is going crazy and I'm kept busy freezing and canning away. Of course the temp is upper 80's and high humidity but if you want to preserve your garden's bounty, you have to knuckle down and and sweat. We didn't even turn the AC on - it can't keep with the kitchen heat.
I think I'm finished for the day though. 6 quarts pickles and 1 pint pickled eggplant this morning.
This afternoon was tomato sauce. It really takes hours and hours to make 6 pints of sauce. Hope it's worth it!
Here's my freezer stuffed with beans and corn (and full of beef underneath).
Tomato Sauce - the making of....
After picking, we need to put them in boiling water to loosen the skins and split them. This only takes a couple of minutes.
Then we carefully dip them out of the pot and place in the sink filled with ice water to stop the cooking and continue to loosen up the skins.
Now we take the cooled tomatoes and put them through my tomato processor to get rid of the skins and seeds. It works great! Here you see the cooled tomatoes on the right and the seeds/skins/bad tomatoes on the left.
Here is the processor with the skins/seeds coming out the front into the green bowl and the tomato sauce coming out the left side.
From here I have to saute onions and garlic in olive oil. Then add celery and carrots. I add the processed tomatoes as well as parsley from Emma's herb garden and oregano, bay leaves and pepper. I simmer it all for about 2 hours during which time it reduces to about half the amount and thickens up the finished sauce. I have to add lemon juice to acidify the sauce so I can process it in a boiling water bath. The pints are processed for 35 minutes.
The finished product - 6 small pint jars of heaven! Which my children will all want to take home with them...
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