In an effort to use up a little vacation time, and give myself a couple of “me” days, I took the past two Mondays off. Relaxation efforts on the first Monday? A big fat FAIL.
I told myself I would do better this past Monday. That all flew out the window when I foolishly offered to deal with our latest tomato harvest, which included my first foray into pressure canning.*
A small portion of the harvest
Instead I spent the day cutting tomatoes,
Blending tomatoes,
And cooking them into sauce,
So I could cancan can.
I watched nervously as the pressure built, fearing the worst (broken jars) as I heard some suspicious noises from inside.
Nothing to do but wait. Eleven pounds of pressure for fifteen minutes, them time for it to fully depressurize.
A peek inside . . .
No tomato vomit, i.e., tomato bits floating in the canning water, indicating certain jar breakage. I still held my breath as I removed the jars, since sometimes a jar can crack, but remain more or less intact until moved.
All intact! Of course, I kind-of overshot my goal of cooking the tomatoes down enough to only have to do one round (seven quarts) of canning. My super thick sauce only yielded five quarts, which I divided into four quart jars, two pint jars, and a pint-and-a-half of tomato juice to give me seven jars for a full load.
So, relaxing Monday FAIL, but canning SUCCESS. I’ll take it.
*We bought the pressure canner last summer, right before Pookie arrived. Matthew used to can a few batches of green beans, but I was pretty out of commission during that time. Matthew’s mom handled all of the tomato canning last year (water bath method), and she’s done a ton of it for us already this season.
