30 September 2012 - Domestic Diva aka Canning Queen

Here it is, the official last day of September.  Also the last official day of my sister's birthday month. The celebrations have wound down --all the daily bits of "What have you done for yourself today?" and there was a lot happening, let me tell you!  In spite of all the celebratory stuff going on, I have been busy.  It started with Jack and his garden. 

His tomato plants were not only prolific, but incredibly delicious. I think this was the best crop we have ever had. A hot dry summer is certainly the best thing there is for growing tomatoes. After looking at all the red in the garden, he announced we were canning.  

Seriously, what is more cheerful than a blue bucket full of tomatoes?  Two buckets?  Jack and I pulled out all the canning equipment and put up 7 quarts of tomatoes. Jack manned the steamer, kept me supplied with scalded tomatoes and I slipped the skins off and packed them in jars. Great teamwork.

But that was just the beginning. I happened to mention the weekend canning project to David Swan, who one-upped me with his story about all the tomatoes that he dried and packed. He uses plum tomatoes for this and I remembered my brother David had a couple of loaded plants that he couldn't eat fast enough. Jack and I wandered down to David's, admired the work on his blacksmith shop, picked tomatoes, then went shopping in his cupboard for some lids and bottles. 

We galumphed home with the tomatoes and since the process sounded so easy, I did them that evening. Some of us are slow learners. I know he told me to put them in the oven for nine hours. By the time I popped them in the oven, they needed to come out at 2am. Yep. Set my alarm and got up, pulled them out, turned off the oven and staggered back to bed. 

Fast forward another two weeks and Jack is dragging tomatoes in the house again...not by the bucketful, this time, but by the trug. We had to stop and fortify ourselves for the job with a toasted tomato sandwich. 

Thanks to Amy for adding that sandwich to our repertoire. Yet another YUM is added to our world. 

When we went to  pick tomatoes at David's, he sent me home with a canner that was so big it took both Jack and me to lift it when it was full. You can see how it hangs over the edges of our stove. 

But between that blue hot water bath canner and the pressure cooker canner next to it, we processed another 13 quarts of tomatoes in no time at all. Our fruit room is starting to look really good with all the jars on the shelves.

I made the mistake of mentioning to David that I was thinking about making crabapple jelly. The apples were starting to fall and they looked so good I hated to waste them, even if the deer love to eat them.

He pressed his steam juicer on me. There was nothing for it. Now I had to pick crabapples. Wow, does that ever work great. It saves a ton of time and takes a lot of the work out of making jelly.  It almost looked like a still sitting on the stove...all I needed was some copper tubing and I could have been making crabapple liquor.  I got three and a half quarts of gorgeous pink juice from this one batch of crabapples, and the next weekend turned it all into jelly. 

 I can only wonder what is next? Pickles? Chutney?