Beginning Our Fall Harvest and Canning

So Krysta and I got together to get our canning on!
It was a warm day, and driving around in the Honda, is really hot. We went to Allred Orchards and were able to score 2nds on peaches! Seriously such a great score! Normal boxes of the peaches we bought last year were $17 dollars a box! The 2nds were only $7 a box! We got two boxes for less than the price of one!
We bought more jars, and then got some pears too. We headed back to Krysta’s place, and get Mirah out of her car seat.

You can’t tell, but her hair was totally wet with sweat.

My little cutie!

Thinking deeply.

Karen and Mirah had a great time on the beautiful blanket that my mom made for Mirah!

In this little outfit our friend Suzy gave us, Mirah’s little legs really shined.

Knees… 🙂

While we got started, Mirah rolled around on the blanket.

We got Mirah all comfy in her bouncer

and headed out to the garden outside of Krysta’s place, and loaded up on tomatoes.

So here are instructions on how to can tomatoes:

Get all of our cans out and ready. Make sure you have enough rings and lids for all the jars you want to fill.

You can reused linds, but they need to be dent free, and rust free, like this one.

CLEAN EVERYTHING in hot soapy water. Rings, lids, and jars. Wide mouth jars are the BEST.

Rinse the soap all completely! Then let them air dry.

Then clean, the tomatoes. Then Blanch them.

To blanch, pour boiling water completely over the tomatoes in the bowl. The water needs to completely cover the tomatoes. Let them sit for 60 seconds or so. Then run cool water over them.

This is what it will look like. The skin will just come off. You can sometimes lift it all of in one piece.

Core, deseed, and cut up the tomatoes.

At this point start your water boiling.

Then separate all your lids, and pour hot, not boiling water over them, so the rubber is a little soft and sticky.

Don’t touch the lids on the bottom, they need to stay sterile. I use a fork, but we also have a magnet stick thing that kind of works. Sterilize you jars with boiling water, the set them out to dry and ready to fill.

With a measuring cup, put the tomatoes into the jars. Use a knife to get all the air pockets out of the tomatoes. Fill to the bottom rim. Clean the rim with hot water, and a towel.

Put the rings on, but not too tight. Sort of loosely.
Then put the lid on for about 25- 30 minutes.
The will be wet.

The will look like this pic above. The tomatoes will be floating in the jar. As the cool, you will hear poping. That is the jars sealing. Take the rings off, wipe off the lids. Put the rings back on REALLY tight. Make sure that the lids are labeled.