Tomatoes

I now understand fully why squirrels start getting so frantic this time of year! My overall goal is to get enough preserved so I don't have to buy any/much out of season produce, and because winter lasts approximately 9 months here, I've bargained for a long and hot summer of canning!  Suddenly, all my favorite fruits and veggies have come into season at exactly the same time.  What to do?

A big box of Romas is a LOT, but I forgot to take a picture in the box!

So...In 2 weekends, I processed 3 boxes of tomatoes,  which may have been 1 1/2 bushels.  Or something.  It was long hours in a hot kitchen.  But, totally worth it. I've made: canned plain tomatoes, canned cajun seasoned tomatoes, 'simple house salsa', roasted tomato chipotle salsa, roasted tomatillo chipotle salsa, seasoned tomato sauce, chili sauce with chiles, tomato pepper sauce, 3 batches of bruschetta in a jar, 2 batches of tomato chutney, pickled cherry tomatoes and some oven roasted tomatoes for in the fridge.

The challenge with tomatoes is that you have only a couple day window between perfectly ripe, red tomatoes and mush- so working fast is a must when you buy in bulk!  Other than that, here's what I learned:

-The roasted salsas are great because very little prep is needed, and they really are the awesomest salsas anyway
-The tomato chutney is amazing, and I really hadn't been a 'chutney person' until now, whatever that means
-The seasoned tomato sauce, while nice and definitely useful, was a little too annoyingly slow- too many steps.  It caused me to have a canning hangover until about noon the next day
-Its a good idea to not have too many things at the same time that have to 'boil down by half' 
-My patience for peeling tomatoes is limited to about 1 box per weekend
-I should have taken the Canning Tomatoes class- getting a beautiful can is tougher than I would have thought

Steamy!

Kind of watery for Romas, I think!

 A few air bubbles- they worked themselves out