There's a Tear in My Tomato Beer

Not really. I'm having a blast! But 7 pints of canned tomatoes, 6 pints of knock-your-socks-off-salsa and soon to be hopefully 7 pints of pizza sauce later, I'm not even through half of my tomatoes. This will be a marathon...not a sprint. Tomorrow....or with a burst of energy, tonight, I will conquer! I just sat down to write this with a glass of wine and my sweet little dog, Binks who is licking the splatters of tomato off my shirt and several suggestions have come to mind.

First of all, I am a novice canner. I have such fond memories of my mother putting the absolute fear of God into me that we would all die of botulism if everything wasn't just so, that I have always wanted to get back to it. Sighting that I just didn't have the time before, last Fall I bought a pressure canner and a water bath canner this Spring. There is not stopping me now! But that's not all you need. I highly suggest that if you are going to can anything that ends with the word sauce, you invest in a food strainer. My parents used to put up some ridiculous amount of tomato juice when I was a kid. I want to say something like 120 quarts. My dad liked his tomato juice. My job was to run those little bastards through the hand sieve. I took this job very seriously. Those contents were dry in that sieve by the time I was done with them. I found my strainer last fall on local classifieds on Facebook. It was in great shape and it saved the day! So much easier and even fun!  It makes fast work of those tomatoes and I won't need shoulder repair surgery just yet. My other suggestion is get a good food processor! For my salsa today is was the boss! I loved it and made a job of jalapenos and onions much better. Back to my sauce....stay tuned.

PS...
I have had some of you ask about subscribing to this blog and I'm looking to put that option on here. Thank you so much for your kind words! I am just having fun! More soon!