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Home > I Don't Care if My Tomatoes Float

I Don't Care if My Tomatoes Float

September 16th, 2012 at 03:40 am

Because really, if you're going to do the raw pack method you're going to get that. As long as you bubble your jars, no worries. And who wants to make it any harder than you have to by doing the hot pack method when it's 75 degrees out. Oh, yeah, guess what I did today?

I spent most of the afternoon and evening turning this:



...into this:



And I feel an extraordinary amount of satisfaction from it. That's a pretty good number of jars for five hours of work. 21 pints. My goal for the summer was 24 pints of diced tomatoes. I don't know if I'll do more diced or not. I'd need about four more pounds to do that. 3 more pints is probably not worth the effort of getting out the canner and going through the whole process. I think 21 is probably close enough to call it good.

I do need to do a lot more sauce though. I spent $57.25 on organic tomatoes at the farmer's market today and then threw in at least a pint's worth of my own tomatoes. Not bad for a year's supply.

I ended up with 2 pounds of waste just in skins and cores, but the chickens will be happy to eat that with their breakfast tomorrow. I was careful to keep any green bits out, which was probably an additional 2 ounces of waste. That's really not too bad starting with 28 pounds (only 1 of which was mine).

This was my first trip to this farmer's market. It was nice, but not enough shade when the sun is so blaringly hot. It was more blinding than anything. I found a couple of new small, local, organic farms that I will be patronizing in the future.

Posted in Sustainable Living | 4 Comments »

4 Responses to “I Don't Care if My Tomatoes Float”

  1. snafu Says:
    September 16th, 2012 at 04:08 am 1347768505
    1347768505

    Tomatoes look fantastic but how do you allocate 21 pints? Are they used for a particular meal or your weekly spaghetti or dishes where the tomatoes are the feature like Crab Louis, Salsa, or one of the multi Italian sauces?

  2. My English Castle Says:
    September 16th, 2012 at 04:15 am 1347768938
    1347768938

    What a beautiful photo!

  3. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    September 16th, 2012 at 04:31 am 1347769886
    1347769886

    What a lot of time and effort - well worth it I'd imagine (for your family at least.) Big Grin

  4. LuckyRobin Says:
    September 16th, 2012 at 04:39 am 1347770382
    1347770382

    Snafu--I use a can of diced tomatoes in a fancier recipe about twice a month, because that's about how often I want to make the effort, so that was what I based it on. It's either my fancy spaghetti sauce or some other hearty Italian dish like ravioli or lasagne. And then whatever chunky sauce is leftover goes on a homemade pizza.

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