Canning #2: Tomatoes

The first week in September, Picadilly Farm again gifted us with bulk produce, this time in the form of twenty-pound boxes of tomatoes. We got two. (We actually requested four, so the forty pounds represented a scaling down of our ambitions.)

I told you about the six pounds I diverted off into ketchup and tomato jam. Jack, Anna, and Erica handled the other thirty-four, blanching, peeling, dicing, and canning something like sixteen quarts. (Jack made a neat time-lapse iPhone movie of their progress; maybe if you ask him about it, he'll post it where you can see it.)

(Many thanks to Nathaniel and Ariel who lent their proper canning gear -- pot, rack, and jar lifter -- for the project. You've seen what happens when we improvise.)

High-fives all around! We had our diced tomatoes for the winter ...

... or not. A month of tomato sauces and minestrones and one enormous pot of chili later, all the tomatoes are gone. We barely needed to can them.