I Canned Tomatoes and Froze Pasta Sauce

I wrote this post in September of last year and saved it as a draft, but never posted it.  Here it is now.  I tried to finish it with what I could remember. Sorry.

We had a very busy week last week, with the Chelan County Fair and everything else going on.  My auntie Linda and I sewed frontier women costumes to wear to the fair because we had a booth for my aunt's business, Etched in Time, LLC, and I brought a bunch of soaps to sell.  The whole thing was kind of a bust.  Fair attendance was very low and even of the few people who attended, not many came into our barn.  We thought it would be a popular barn because the wine garden and wine tasting events were in it, but we were very wrong about that.  We were so bored that I crocheted soap savers until I couldn't stand it and then I saw an example of double stitch hand quilt piecing and decided to give that a go.  I actually hand pieced a pretty large part of a quilt just sitting there at our booth. I used pieces left over from making my costume.  It was really four days of sweltering heat and boredom.  We did meet some nice people, though, especially the other vendors.  The lady who owns the Attic Window Quilt Shop in Wenatchee was just across from us.  That is where I got inspired to do the hand quilt piecing.

Here is the section I worked on.

This is a close up of the double stitch on the front.  You put the fabrics right side together and stitch a running stitch along the edge (it is supposed to be 1/4 inch from the side, but I didn't have a measuring device with me).  Then you open the fabric up and finger press the seam allowances to one side and running stitch along the seam to hold the seam allowance flat.  I stitched pieces together end to end and then rows together.

This is what the back looks like.  I pressed the seam allowances under the blue piece on the short seams then all in the same direction on the long seams.

Well, this is supposed to be a gardening blog, so I should get back on subject, right?  You may have noticed in the above picture that there are a plethora of canned tomatoes pickles and jams under the quilt piece.

There are 14 quarts of canned tomatoes, 7 quarts of pickles 4 assorted sized jars of pickled green beans, and there used to be four batches of apricot jam and one batch of peach jam.  I have been giving the jam away.  We gave some to my husband's parents and grandparents when we visited them.  My family all makes there own jam, so we trade flavors sometimes, but jam isn't a very good gift for them.  People who don't make jam always appreciate it, though.  Store bought jam just doesn't compare.  All of these tomatoes came from our community garden plot and my porch and the cucumbers were from the community garden plot, before the squash bugs hit.

Here is an update on the plants on the balcony:

Here is one of the eight small pots with Thai basil.  They are looking great.  I will have to pick these and dry them before it frosts.

This is the poor little rescue Roma tomato.  It is doing better than the other two. It hasn't gotten a chance to get root bound yet.

Here is one of the large Roma tomatoes typical from this bush.

The super hot jalapeno plant has not been having any peppers for a while.  It finally has just two small ones.  It is very crowded in it's pot with beans and nasturtiums.

The eggplant is still going strong.  I have picked over twenty fruits already and as you can see, there are plenty more growing.  Wow, I never thought that it would do this well.  Especially after the aphid problem earlier in the year.

The sungold cherry tomato is not doing well at all.  Its roots are so crowded.  Note to self: this variety does not make a good container tomato.  The plant of the same variety that I planted in the community garden is doing very well.  It has produced so many delicious cherry tomatoes that I am kind of glad this one is a dud. I don't know what I would do with all of the tomatoes.  I even canned a jar of them.  I peeled each little guy before packing it in the jar.  I gave that one to my aunt who shares the community garden space.  She loves them so much.

These are the other two Romas.  They are covered by pole beans, and, as you would expect, they are kind of suffering from it, that and being completely root bound in their pots.  They are still making some tomatoes, though.

The rosemary plant is hanging all over the pot it is in. I really love rosemary with chicken.  I will pick and dry most of this before the frost.  I have been told by several people that it is very unlikely that it will make it through the winter in our climate.  I am thinking about bringing it inside.  That is probably a death sentence for it, too.  I am the grim reaper for house plants.  I forget about them. Maybe I will do better with this one because it is actually good to eat.

Here's my helper after I caught him "pruning" the beans again.

It is hard to stay mad at him. He is so cute.  Look at his pupils.  They have almost disappeared form the bright sun on the porch.  He is a house cat, and doesn't get outside except when I am out on the balcony taking care of the plants.

The eggplant is a very pretty plant. I think I will always grow them.  They make a pretty ornamental and they produce loads of delicious fruit. You can see the marigold peaking out.  I always try to incorporate some into my gardens for the beneficial insects and the beauty.

I emptied this cupboard to store all of my tomatoes in.  I pick and store them until I have enough ripe for a batch of sauce or at least a batch of quart jars of canned tomatoes.

Eggplants are wonderful fruit.  They keep for what seems like forever in the crisper drawer in the fridge.  These are about two weeks old. I finally took them out and made one of my favorite french dishes.  I don't have a clue what it is called, but my friend Christelle told me how to make it after I asked her what she was eating for lunch at work one day.  It is basically a stew with eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onions, tomatoes and whatever else you happen to have around.  You cook it and cook it until it is a thick chili-like consistency.  You season it with salt, pepper, garlic and a nice mix of french herbs.  It really tastes like there is meat in there. It is so good, even my husband really likes it.  My daughter wouldn't try it.  Apparently it looked too scary with all the different ingredients.  I still haven't gotten her to try an eggplant.

The beans are getting away from me at this point.  I pick them every other day and still, lots of them escape my notice until they are too far along.  I have been eating them raw, steaming them, frying them, giving them away, and pickling them.  I can't can them because I don't have a pressure canner yet, but I think I will buy one before I plant this many beans again. These plants on my balcony are really impressive.

Here is where the tomato sauce I made ended up.  I did my research and decided that it just wouldn't be safe to water bath process this sauce because it has too many other ingredients added to predict the acidity.  I just put it in quart sized freezer bags and froze it.  From now on I am just canning strait tomatoes.  Then I can take those canned tomatoes and make sauce when I need it.  The frozen sauce is pretty good and very convenient, but I don't have very much freezer space.  I mostly like to save that space for buying meat in bulk and freezing the rest for later. Oh, and for frozen berries and fruit for smoothies. You can see frozen strawberries in the front right corner.

 

I Had to Get Out the 5 Gallon Pot to Make Sauce This Time

I made the hugest batch of pasta sauce I have ever made. 

The amount of tomatoes that I peeled and deseeded would not fit into my largest cooking pot.  That was even before I got halfway through all of the ripe tomatoes I had.  I poured it into the large pot that we use for beer making and kept on peeling and deseeding until all the ripe tomatoes were in there.  I also added my sauce starter recipe: garlic, onions, celery and carrots all diced and cooked in olive oil until they are very soft. I seasoned it with red peppers, black pepper, salt and loads of herbs.  After cooking it down by half so that the sauce is nice and thick, it filled seven quart jars with about a pint extra.  I put it into clean jars with good tight lids in the refrigerator until I can either borrow a pressure canner, or get some containers to freeze it all.  I might just have room in the freezer for all of it.  I would rather can it, but I read the food safety recommendations for pasta sauce and pressure canning is recommended.  I read that you can just water bath process canned tomatoes, so I will be making canned tomatoes out of the rest of the tomatoes, I think.  I just hope I can come up with enough jars.  The heirloom tomatoes are starting to make lots of fruit now, too.  The only bushes that are starting to lag a bit are the Roma tomato bushes on the porch. I fed them some fertilizer, but I think they are just suffering for being confined to a pot and being allowed to get too dry a few times. The really exciting news is that I picked five rather large eggplants two days ago, and already there are a couple more that are definitely large enough to pick.

Look at these beauties. I am going to cook them up tonight.  I need to get some Parmesan cheese or maybe lasagna fixings.  They go great in anything really, once you fry them up.  I fried a bunch of sliced eggplant up for pizza topping last time we had homemade pizza night at our house.  My aunt loved them.

Here is a blurry shot just so you can see relative size to my hand.

I ordered two crocheted cotton market bags from Amie at www.etsy.com/shop/amieq to put my produce from my garden in.  They got here so fast and are such great bags, I can't say enough.  They are very sturdily made and I have no fear about sticking them in the wash when they get dirty.  They hold up to the tens of pounds of tomatoes, cucumbers and onions that I have been transporting in them.  I will also use them when I go grocery shopping.  I love them. You can also see some tomatillos here that I picked this week.  I broiled them and processed them with some broiled Anaheim chilies and jalapenos.  They weren't bad.  I wish I had more of them.

Here you can see that someone climbed up into my garden, grabbed some tomatoes, ate them right there and then and threw the tops right down in the front of the garden so I could make sure and see that they were there.  Since I took this picture, I have not seen any evidence of trespass, or vandalism.  I wonder what this person was thinking.

Well, I should get back to work figuring out what to do with all of the sauce.  I will let you know how the tomato canning goes.  

I also made a trip over to the in laws garden.  Wow, it is looking really good.  The corn is getting close to being ready and they are still picking loads of green beans.  Actually they are getting even more green beans now because the pole beans are now coming on.  The pumpkins, squash and melons are doing great.  They have one pumpkin that is getting so big, it is threatening to shadow out everything else.  They have several watermelons that will definitely get ripe, not to mention cantaloupe.  I am allergic to cantaloupe, but they look really delicious.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention the piles of cucumbers that they are harvesting.  It is so cool to see. Next time I go I will have to take some pictures for you.

Wow, It Has Been a While

I am sorry I haven't updated this blog in a while.  I have been very busy with the garden and my summer job.  My aunt and I were featured in an article about the community garden in the local paper (The Wenatchee World) last Wednesday, on the front page! The article was very nice and the pictures weren't bad.  I won't say that we looked sexy, but at least you couldn't see my plumbers tan.  I will try to scan the article in or find a link to the online article or something.  I promise that this week I will take some new pictures and post some more interesting news.  Here are a few tidbits.

We have harvested pounds and pounds of tomatoes over the last few weeks.  We have made several batches of salsa, eaten too many BLTs, and I even made a batch of pasta sauce from scratch.

This is what is left of the sauce.  We couldn't wait to eat it.  It turned out pretty good. Onion, carrot, and celery with herbs and hot peppers cooked in olive oil until soft then added peeled, deseeded tomatoes and cooked and stirred until thick and saucey.

We already have this many more tomatoes waiting to be made into more sauce or salsa.  Can you beleive it? The Roma tomatoes are just starting to produce.

These are mostly Romas. Some are from the porch and some are from the garden.  The garden plant is definatly making more, especially since about half of the porch ones have end rot, but the porch plants are still making quite a few tomatoes.  The Belgian beauty heirloom tomato on the porch is finally making lots of green tomatoes, one has even started changing color.  The Superfantasitc that fell over is doing just fine although we did have to straiten it and restake it once again this week.  It is just too heavy with giant tomatoes.

These are Superfantastic tomatoes.  Aren't they huge?  These are my husbands hands.

We have also had gallons of Sungold cherry tomatoes.  We eat them one by one, or by the forkful in salads and put bowls of them out for guests.  My cousin's girlfriend loves them.  They are very tastey.  My husband took about two quarts to work in a bowl and they were gone in less than three hours.

Our cucumbers have been making lots of cukes as well.  I have yet to make any pickles, though.  I just finally bought some apple cider vineger today.  I will make pickles out of the next fresh batch.  We have made several salads with them and there are a few here in this box waiting for eating.

The danver short carrots just keep getting fatter and not longer.  We picked a couple this weekend.  The are great in the pasta sauce.  They add a little sweetness and lots of vitamin A.

I have been picking up the naturtium seeds from the porch when they fall.  I will save them for next year.  Hopefully they will be the creeping beautiful kind.

Here are a few peppers from the super hot jalapeno plant on the porch.  None of our pepper plants have really taken off yet.  It just started being hot enough here two weeks ago.  I espect them to start producing heavily over the nest few weeks.  The cucumber plants should increase yeild as well.

I am declaring victory over the eggplant aphids, finally.  The trick that finally worked may surprise you.  I told you I brought home some lady bug eggs form the community garden before, but those didn't make a dent, grew up and flew away.  Well, I stepped it up a few notches.  We had a huge population of aphids on the lower leaves of our sunflower in the community garden.  After a while I noticed a whole host of predators and parasitoids attacking them, so I picked about four leaves and brought them home and placed them in the eggplant pot.  Within days I noticed parasitized aphid mummies, predatory maggots, lacewing larvae, and ladybug beetle larvae having a hayday.  The new leaves and flowers that have grown this week are totally aphid free.  I have notice the first very small fruit developing, as well.  I am sure I would have had some earlier if not for the swarms of aphids on the flowers and shoots.

I promise I will have pictures of the garden and porch in the next couple of days.