Like I wrote last week Friday, I really appreciate all the produce we receive from others. We could never grow all this food on our property, however, my parents have a large yard with fruit trees and a garden. They do not want to put up all the fruit their land produces so they share with us, and for that I am thankful. Friday evening we picked plums and apples at their place and they gave us this box of tomatoes from their garden.
We also picked the produce in the above photo from our garden on Friday. The yellow tomatoes are Persimmon Tomatoes and I think they look like persimmons and taste very good. The zucchini are from my husband's place of work and the cucumbers are two that were hiding and grew too large to use, they went to the compost pile. We have lots of cucumbers that are the right size for eating, so we won't miss these two.
When I got home Saturday afternoon it was time to get busy, I made tomato sauce and canned 7 jars of tomato sauce and 7 jars of whole tomatoes. I like to have some whole tomatoes for chili and stews. They can also be quickly made into sauce if I have more whole tomatoes and not enough sauce.
I do not know what the acid content is for the tomatoes I used. I had a variety of tomatoes and I wasn't going to take any chances, so I used the pressure canner.
We've probably all heard scary stories about pressure canners exploding, however, with a canner in good working order there is nothing to fear. I think that perhaps the newer canners are more trustworthy than those of my grandmother's day, when they had to clean beets off the ceiling. Just keep an eye on the pressure, adjusting the heat a little more or less to keep it at the right pounds of pressure. Pressure canning is also faster, tomato sauce takes just 15 minutes at 11 pounds of pressure. Actually my grandmother (now in her 90s) used her pressure canner a lot. She even canned meat since they had animals on their farm, but did not have a freezer for a number of years.
The zucchini was shredded and placed in the freezer for making bread this winter. I put a generous 2 cups in each container, since all my zucchini bread recipes call for two cups and the zucchini shrinks once thawed, as the water is released.
The potatoes cured for ten days, so Sunday evening I placed them in cold-storage. I weighed them and then divided them up into three boxes; large and medium-sized red, large and medium-sized yukon gold, and one mixed box of small potatoes. All together there where 60 pounds of potatoes.
Tonight after work I start making juice with the plums and apples.
Real Food Wednesday
Wow, it sounds as though you have been very busy with all that wonderful produce..just look at all of those plums. Your persimmon tomatoes are intriguing, I'll have to look them up.
ReplyDeleteI have never made plum juice, just apple and rhubarb, so I am really looking forward to that.
ReplyDelete-Brenda
Wow that is a lot of produce to process all at once. I don't own a pressure canner. I keep thinking some day I ought to if just because of the faster processing times.
ReplyDeleteHow blessed are you to have parents who want to share their fresh produce with you! The color of your persimmon tomatoes is very pretty. I haven't ventured into the world of canning yet, but pressure canning sounds like less work than typical hot water bath canning. It all sounds a bit intimidating to me, though.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great haul from your parents! I wish I lived closer to my inlaws as they have several pear trees and I would dearly love to take their surplus off their hands each year - unfortunately they are quite a drive away.
ReplyDeleteGood work on all the canning and cool storage.
Those are some beautiful plums and apples. What are you going to do with all of it? I have some plums and was thinking of pitting them and then canning them.
ReplyDeleteVrtlarica,
ReplyDeleteI'm making juice with the plums and apples and I may dehydrate some of the plums.
-Brenda
Wow look at all of those plums! I would have never thought to juice them. What a great idea to deal with the excess.
ReplyDeleteHow fortunate you are to have the bounty of your parents land. Love all the plums. We have a plum tree that ripens at the beginning of summer, and last year it was loaded! I was freezing plums, canning plums, making plum sauce, plum butter, and cooking with plums. Plum juice would be good with breakfast in the winter.
ReplyDelete~~Lori
What a great harvest! Your canned tomatoes look great...how do you keep them from separating? I canned mine in the pressure canner, using the raw pack method, and they all separated into pulp at the top and clearish liquid at the bottom....what's your trick? do you cook them first?
ReplyDeleteMy whole tomatoes separate too, you can't get around that. The taste is just as good when you use the tomatoes later, I pour the whole jar in, clearish liquid and all, and let it cook down. I use the whole tomatoes for chili, stews, dishes I want to simmer for a while.
ReplyDeleteWhen I make and can sauce, that does not separate, most of the liquid has already cooked out and I use this mainly as the beginning of marinara sauce.
-Brenda