Sunday, July 27, 2014

Canning Tomatoes

Last weekend, Justin, Wyatt, and I picked tomatoes at a local farmer’s patch. We ended up picking 5 five-gallon buckets full. We headed to the local school-run canning plant where Justin works on his off days to can tomatoes and sauce.
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At the canning plant we washed, cored, blanched, peeled, and stuffed tomatoes into cans. These will be used for chili, spaghetti sauce, etc. We ended up with 32 cans of crushed tomatoes.
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We also juiced a little less than half of those tomatoes. They were blanched but didn’t have to be peeled.  When it came out of the juicer, we cooked it down a bit to thicken it. We added a pinch of salt to each can too. We got 22 cans of sauce.
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Jake helped us get it done. I joked telling him he was out to get Justin’s summer job and he laughed but he thought he would really like it. I think we might have a replacement for Justin in a few years.
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The canning plant is a great place to save the seasonal produce that we love that’s grown right here in Georgia. We can can items and don’t have to be afraid of spoilage if the power goes out and we know exactly what we’re getting when we open up a can. I can’t wait to go back up there and make some homemade soups and can those too!

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