The Summer of Tomatoes

This year's garden was really about experimentation.  It is my first garden at our new place.  It is also the first time I've kept a garden in Colorado.  The thing I wanted to experiment with most was tomatoes.

We use a lot of tomato sauce around here which means we have been sending a lot of metal cans to the recycling plant.

I had learned to can last year, so this year I wanted to try tomatoes.  I planted 9 roma tomato plants and 1 heirloom tomato plant.

I found a few resources and gave it a shot a couple weeks ago.  I just made the sauce and did not can it since it resulted in such a small amount.  It was pretty tasty though.

This time around I picked 11 lbs 5 ounces on Sunday and added that to the 4 lbs 6 ounces that we had left over from the previous couple of weeks.

I peeled the tomatoes by blanching in boiling water until the skins split then moving them to cold water.  I put all of the tomatoes to my stock pot.

It's a good thing I didn't have more tomatoes, I think this is the limit of my pot.  I boiled them down, smashing and stirring often.  :-)

Since these tomatoes were destined for canning jars, I tried to remove the seeds by pushing the sauce through a strainer.  It didn't work very well, so a food mill may be going on my To Acquire List.

I prepared the jars as recommended for water-bath canning, added the sauce and lemon juice and put the filled jars in the "canner."

The final result is 6 Pint-sized jars and a little extra that Hubba will be turning into delicious salsa.  :-)

We also enjoyed a Caprese Salad yesterday with the Heirloom Tomatoes, Homegrown Basil and Fresh Mozzarella.

I will have many more tomatoes over the coming weeks.  I'm thinking about drying some, but need to find out if the tomatoes should be peeled first.  I hope not.

Hubba thinks this whole tomato growing effort is funny because I'm not a huge fan of raw tomatoes.  But I am a huge fan of cooked tomato sauce... marinara sauce, salsa, enchilada sauce, tomato soup.  Yep, I'm a huge fan of all of those.  :-)