Tomato Sauce

Hubby was reading the Mother Earth News magazine and turned to me and said, "Why don't you do some canning?"  "Why, what a good idea" I said.  Thus began my canning adventure.  First, the purchase of some canning books and supplies.  Lots of supplies: large pot, small, medium and large jars, jar lifter, food mill, large funnel, canning salts, pectins, rubber gloves....

How about some tomato sauce?  Welch's produce stand was selling 40 pound boxes of Roma tomatoes for $12.00.  The recipe looked easy enough-throw tomatoes in a pot (1/3 of the box), crush with potato masher, stir in onions, garlic and boil for two hours.  After they cool a bit, put in the food mill and turn the handle a million times.  What I ended up with was sauce the consistency of tomato juice.

Before food mill

Okay-new recipe.  Blanch tomato, peel, remove seeds and cut up-this part took two hours.  Saute onions, peppers and garlic, add cut up tomatoes and cook about 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, heat up the soupy sauce from the day before and stir in large can of tomato paste.  Mix the two together.

Much better.

Now for the jars.  Wash them really well and put them in the big pot that has been filled with water.  Heat them up.  Pick up a jar with the jar lifter and dump the hot water out.  Put the large funnel over jar, dip ladle into hot sauce and fill jar up.  Run a chop stick along inside of jar to get rid of air bubbles, wipe jar lip and screw top on.  Using jar lifter, put in hot pot of water.  Repeat.  Cover pot and boil like crazy for 20 minutes.  Take top off and wait 5 minutes.  Lift hot jars out and put on top of towel for 24 hours.

Look at kitchen, shake head and wonder where to start.  Open  bottle of red wine and sit outside in the sun for several hours.

Yum