Monday, September 9, 2019

Seeing red

Last year I didn't can any tomatoes, but then again, last year the garden wasn't knocking at the back door, or leaving tomatoes on the neighbors' porches during the night.

This year, I canned tomatoes.

Even though the other reason I put it off is the bad layout of our kitchen (to be remedied in the new year, once craft show season and book release are dealt with, and I've recovered from what part of the holidays I choose to participate in).

But I did it anyway. Instead of using my ginormous canning kettle, which can only sit on the extra-large burner next to the fridge (which doesn't like the extra large burner and makes resentful clunking noises), I borrowed a high stockpot from my neighbor and canned in smaller batches on the regular burner.

That meant I could only do 5 jars at a time, but they're done.

Since most of my tomatoes were Juliets, which is a large grape/small plum size, I didn't bother to skin skin or core them. I just cut off the stem end, cut them in half and put them in my crockpot to cook down. Once they were mushy, I hit them with the immersion blender, which conveniently clogged with the larger bits of skin, so they were retroactively skinned.  I did two full crockpots of tomatoes, then today I got them into jars.

I also made candied jalapenos for the first time, using both jalapenos and poblanos from the yard, and a few Spanish padrons which had turned red (and hotter). The syrup on those is cider vinegar, sugar, turmeric, celery seed, mustard seed, cayenne and garlic powder. It smelled delicious.

Today's high only hit 80, so the kitchen wasn't the worst place to be, and I won't remember the heat when I crack a jar of tomatoes in February and the whole kitchen smells like summer.

1 comment:

bbarna said...

Looking forward to your book release!
Yes canned tomatoes are heaven. I have taken to using my food mill to do tomatoes and apples...removes the skins, etc and gives a lovely texture.