Canning tomatoes

I hadn't planned on canning tomatoes this weekend. But when Rebecca from McMullan wrote me to say that she had slightly blemished tomatoes, I jumped at the chance. Looking at recipes, I had asked for 50 lbs but it ended up they only had 38 and I'm glad for it. 38 lbs is still a lot.

They are celebrity tomatoes, which I heard were only good for cooking, but we have been eating these tomatoes all season and they are great. When I opened the box, the smell of ripe fresh tomatoes hit me in the face.

We took a trip to the local Ace store and stocked up on pint and quart jars. I do wish that I had had those coupons that I signed up for before I bought all these jars, but I intend to can a lot this year so I'm sure it will still be worth it.

This is 38 lbs of tomatoes. It doesn't look like that much, does it?

But it is.

I wash. I dunk in boiling water. I peel. Repeat.

Then I stuff in sanitized jars, add lemon juice, use a chopstick to get rid of bubbles. Top and screw closed.

Day one covered about half the tomatoes. I did four quarts and nine pints.

My solids were floating on top and the liquid below. Google (pickyourown.org, actually) tells me this is because of too much (over five min) pre-cooking. What does that mean? I only boiled to get the skins off for a minute at the max.

So I turned the jars upside down so they would redistribute. Some of the jars leaked as I took them out before sealing shut. I hope that is okay. There was no vegetable matter in the canner.

They all seem to have sealed. I'm hopeful.

Batch two today.

There was extra tomato water. Josh made me a tomato water martini. It makes me hungry.