Easy peasy tomato canning

So. Canning tomatoes. Pretty tedious, right? All that blanching and peeling and boiling for hours...NOPE! I did 8 jars last night in about 30 minutes (plus processing time). The most tedious part was waiting for the tomatoes to come to a boil!

Here's what you do:

1. Wash your tomatoes and get rid of any unwanted bits. 

2. Pop them in the blender. Blend for a few seconds. It doesn't have to be pureed, you just want it chopped up.

3. Put in a pot on the stove, and bring to a boil. Keep adding crushed tomatoes as you blend them up.

4. Sterilize your jars and lids by either a) pouring boiling water into/over them or b) letting them sit in the boiling water in your canner until you need them. I find b less work because you already need to boil the water. You do need to sterilize the tops in a separate bowl though. Not sure why, just do it. :)

5. You can let the sauce boil for a couple hours if you want it thicker. I personally prefer them as little processed as possible so I just bring them to a boil and have at 'er. 

6. Hot pack the tomatoes. That means you pour hot tomatoes into hot jars. Add 1 tbsp lemon juice and 1 tsp salt per jar (this helps bring the acidity up to help preserve them safely). 

7. Clean off the tops, pop on the lids, and put in the boiling water*.

*I prefer to pressure can my tomatoes, since I feel like it's safer. If you have a pressure canner, obviously follow the directions in your manual for tomatoes. I do mine here in Edmonton at 12 lbs pressure for 25 minutes.

8. Make sure the water is above the tops of the jars by at least 1/2 inch. Once the water returns to a boil,  let the jars boil in there for 45 minutes. When done, turn off the water, let it cool down for 5 minutes, and extract your jars. Over the next couple hours they will cool down and you will hear the delightful "ping"** that tells you they are sealed!

**Are you lucky enough to have some of those glass lids? I LOVE those for tomatoes because it means that zero BPA is leaching into my tomatoes. I learned the hard way that you have to put the rubber ring on the glass lid BEFORE putting it on the jar. Sterilize them both in a bowl, together if possible. And when you're done, be especially careful to move the jars as little as possible until they are cool. You obviously won't hear a "ping", so you'll have to remove the rings (which you're supposed to leave off) and give the lid a little tug. Those things hold like crazy, so if it comes off with mild hand pressure, it's not sealed. Either do it again or put it in the fridge to use up soon.

Ok, just one more thing. If you DO want to take the skins off and have a day before you want to do the canning, here's something I discovered last night. Pop them in the freezer for the day. When you're ready to deal with them, put them in a sink of hot water and BOOM the skins will slide right off! WAY less work than boiling for 2 minutes, then putting in a bowl of ice cubes, then getting third degree burns while trying to peel the still-hot tomatoes. Never will I skin tomatoes the old way again!

Here's a movie that will show you how to do this. 

I learned my canning method from her cookbook, 

"Family Feasts for $75 a week", which, incidentally, is an excellent cookbook for learning how to cook from scratch. 

those amazing red orbs

My first garden plants were tomatoes in pots, along the steps leading down to our basement suite. 

In my second house, I also planted tomatoes - out front in what were supposed to be flower beds. 

In our third rental, I moved into the garden 2 months before we moved into the home, mostly so I could get my tomatoes in. 

Now in our fourth home, and first HOME, I try to squeeze in a few more tomatoes every year! The first year, I dedicated an entire bed to tomatoes. Their spacing was determined by how close I could get the tomato cages. But now, oh NOW I have learned. Thanks to the square foot gardening method, I have discovered that a single tomato plant only requires a single square foot of soil. And when you use indeterminate plants, they can sprawl upwards along a single piece of twine instead of requiring a bulky cage. If you don't top them, they just keep growing and growing, producing more and more glorious tomatoes. So now I have 15 tomato plants in the garden and 5 in pots. I'm sure there are many people with more, so I'm not bragging, just happy with what I've got. :) 

It took me a long time to figure out the difference between determinate tomatoes and indeterminate ones. The books say "you prune the indeterminate and don't prune the determinate", but I wanted to know WHY. Why? What makes them different? If you're curious like me, here's some of the differences I have learned from books and just from watching my various types of plants.

1. Determinate plants are basically bushes, with no obvious "trunk". However, even without pruning, an indeterminate tomato has a fairly clear leading stem. 

2. Determinate plants ripen most of their fruit at the same time. You may have a few renegades before the final onslaught, but in general, they'll all suddenly be ready within a couple weeks. This makes them good for canning since you don't have to wait 2 months in between the first and final fruit. 

3. Indeterminate plants ripen as the fruit grows. The fruits on the bottom will, obviously, ripen much before the rest. And the ripening will move upwards. This is why many people "top" their tomatoes in August: pinching off the top of the leading stem so there's no more new fruits, allowing the older fruits to mature. I personally don't really care to do this before September, since I figure I can always ripen them inside after the frost. 

4. Indeterminate plants can get bushy too, if you don't prune them. From what I've gathered from observing my parents' garden and my own, if you don't prune, your fruit never ripens, because it just keeps starting more and more tomatoes. So you'll end up with a lot of tomatoes at the end of the year, but they'll all be green. If you prune religiously, you'll have a decent crop of nice ripe tomatoes maturing at different times. I like to hedge my bets and allow one or two branches to go nuts on my tomato plants, giving me a nice compromise between lots of fruits and ripe fruits.

I have 9 Early Girl plants this year, and, while they don't taste majestic, they are great for canning and produce quite reliably. They are also indeterminate so they just keep on giving all summer! I started mine in March 4 and picked the first ripe on on July 22. I'm sure with a greenhouse you could do better than 4 1/2 months, but our spring was crazy cold so I was happy just to have a ripe tomato in July! I've picked almost 9 lbs off them so far, with lots of unripe and semi-ripe ones left to go. Hopefully we'll have a lovely September to make up for a miserable spring. 

The other type of tomato I've had pretty good luck with in a big pot has been Taxi. I've had about 6.5 lbs off the one plant. It's a determinate, so it's tough to compare at this point with the Early Girls. Bear in mind that I don't use any chemical fertilizers. If I did, there probably would be a lot more. I might consider it for my potted tomatoes next year, since the main concerns about chemical fertilizers are 1) leaching, which pots do anyway, and 2) disrupting the soil microorganisms, and the transient nature of pots isn't very conducive to their life anyway.

Happy tomatoeing! Next up, canning tomatoes the EASY way...

Labor of love

Here's some pics of tonight's labor of love. Rolling giant stones down the driveway and fitting them into position probably made up for my lack of exercise this month. On the bright side, almost half of the front garden is now edged. I bought some super high quality landscaping fabric, cut it in half lengthwise, and put it along the edge of the garden. I then agonizingly rolled about a million stones on top of it. Sometime this autumn my dad has promised (remember Dad??) to help me get a load of wood chips which will officially finish the garden. Hmmm, are you ever really finished with a garden??

Side note: Enjoying a freshly picked lunch!

Still needing one more large rock on each corner.

It's all about Helen...

They called her Helen and they roasted her for dinner. And she was delicious!

My in-laws raised 40 "helens" this year. Meat chickens - you get them for 6 weeks, and they enjoy a lovely gluttonous life until they get sent to chicken heaven. Rather amazingly, they raised their Helens for about $2.87/lb.

I used to be so mortified to go to the farmers market and see the organic chickens there on sale for $20. "What a waste!" I thought. Instead I'd turn to Costco's giant box of arsenic-fed chicken breasts. But as it turns out, eating WHOLE chickens is extremely economical! The chickens we've been eating have, on average, cost about $20 each, just like the farmer's market ones. I start by roasting each chicken for the MOST AMAZING roasted chickens I have ever tasted before. (If it sounds like I'm boasting, it's because I am. :) I have discovered untapped roasting skills, perhaps buried in my Mennonite genetic heritage. We even fight over the crunchy skin from the top. I drool just to think of it.) So that's one meal. Then I cut off the remaining meat, usually getting about 8 cups of chicken, which I divide into 4 freezer bags to be used in casseroles, for wraps, in salads, etc. The carcass gets chucked in the slow cooker and we boil it for a day or two until we're ready for some sort of soup. So out of a regular-sized chicken, we get at least 5 meals (we often have leftovers of casseroles for lunch, so maybe we can idealistically say 8 meals). Out of this last Helen, we got an extra meal because my husband used some for soup before I bagged it, and there was still enough for almost 4 full bags!

Now, I realize that we're talking about 2 adults and 2 small children, so it's not like we're a family of 12. But I'd say that $4/meal for organic chicken is actually much better than you thought it would be! And don't forget the leftovers when you make casseroles - if you count that, we could be closer to $3 a meal!

I have to admit, sometimes I miss cooking different things with large pieces of raw chicken like I used to, but I've just become accustomed to a different way of viewing my food. A way that allows us to be economical and organic! It's also simple and delicious. My littlest man LOVES roast chicken day. Normally we have to fight to get him to eat meat, but hot roasted chicken slides down his gullet like candy. That's what I call a win!

Rotten squash!

Got rotten squash? Maybe I can help! Now, I profess to be no expert, but after noodling around online and using my own educated guesses, here are my 2 theories for those little squashes that you get so excited about, then 2 days later you find totally rotten. 

Rotting 'Big Mama' Squash

How it's SUPPOSED to look. 

1) Lack of pollination. You might think you have squash growing because the base of a female flower looks exactly like the baby squash. And really, it IS the baby squash, but unless you get proper pollination from a male flower, that little baby ain't gonna grow! It's going to rot off the vine and let the plant give it another go. 

If you'd like to give your babies a fighting chance, you can take a male flower, and using a paintbrush or a cotton swab, transfer some pollen from the male to the female. To be honest, I just rip open the male and gently rub the stamens around on the stigma of the female. Hmm, I just realized that sounds rather nasty! I doubt that's really the best option, but I rarely have a paintbrush around when it occurs to me to do some hand-pollinating!

This is a male flower. Notice the lack of a baby-squash-looking thing.

This is a female flower. See that cute little squash at the base? It'll look just like the squash you are trying to grow. This is a pumpkin, therefore the female flower has a baby pumpkin at the base. Your female zucchini flowers will have long skinny bases that look, unsurprisingly, like baby zucchinis. 

This is what you get when there's adequate pollination! An adolescent pumpkin. :)

2) Blossom end rot. Contrary to popular thought, you can blossom end rot just as much in a dry summer as in a wet summer. Blossom end rot in squashes, as well as tomatoes, arises from inconsistent watering, which keeps the plant from properly taking up calcium. The solution to this problem is to make sure your plants are consistently watered. You can also toss some crushed eggshells around the base of your plant. 

Here's a website with some more details. Note what it says right at the end: "BER should not be confused with fruit abortion or inadequate pollination although the symptoms may appear similar. The onset of BER occurs only after the fruit is well on it's way to development while insufficient pollination problems terminate the fruit while still quite small."

dehydrated summer

I'm currently having a love affair with my dehydrator. Someone suggested dehydrating strawberries back at the beginning of July, and after trying those, I haven't looked back! 

I like to make berry jams, but I find we don't eat a lot of them, at least not yet. Maybe when my kids can get their mouth around a PBJ sandwich I'll be using more. 

For now, however, I am seriously in love with dehydrated berries. I've sliced strawberries and put them in as-is, but the time I sprinkled some maple sugar over them was the time something inside my mouth exploded. WOW. 

This is my 40 year old dehydrator. Still works!

I've been picking a lot of raspberries in the past week - from Horse Hill Berry Farm as well as the homes of a couple folks from church, and most of them have gone into the dehydrator. (The ones from our garden pretty much make it just as far as our mouths :)

I have a feeling that when the snow flies, we'll all be incredibly grateful for this taste of summer. The raspberries dry so nicely, and except for the obvious lack of liquid, they taste exactly like...a raspberry.

Next experiment: blueberries!

The great thing about dehydrating is that your fruit is preserved at such a low temperature that all the good nutrients are still in it. So it's much better health-wise than canning. Plus, it's way less time consuming! You just throw your fruit on the trays and check on it once it a while. Now that's my kind of food preservation. Now to actually "preserve" this batch until winter...aye, there's the rub.