Preservation

I think I've mentioned before that I have a vegetable garden. It usually turns out poorly - only tomatoes and cucumbers grow well. My priority is the tomatoes, so I'm not too upset by that.

This year, the only thing that grew was the tomatoes. The last 3 weeks have been hot and sunny, and the tomatoes are going crazy. In order to use some of them (and hopefully dispose of some of the fruit flies that have again invaded my kitchen), today I canned tomatoes. I sterilized 4 pint jars. After that, I boiled water and put the tomatoes in the boiling water for a minute or so, then took them out and put them into cold water. This makes them easy to skin, so I skinned them and put them in the jars, pressing down on each one to remove the air from the jar. When the jars had about 1/2 an inch of space left in them, I put in 1/2 tsp of coarse salt. Next I put the lids on the jars and put them in the canner, then processed them for 20 minutes.

When they were done, I took them out, set them on the counter, and waited for them to seal. When they did, I tightened the lids and they were done.

I've made tomato juice before, and that is much better when it's homemade. Hopefully the canned tomatoes will be as good.