Calling all canners!!!!!

As a young girl my parents used to send my brother and I back ‘home’ to Kansas every summer for at least a month sometimes longer. 
One of my many favorite memories of those visits back was visiting my Grandma M, she is our mom’s grandma so technically our great-grandma but we all just called her Grandma M.  Anyway, she and Poppy, our great-grandpa who passed before Nick (my brother) and I were old enough to remember him, had a farm for most of their married life and she was a canner of all the produce that they grew on the farm. My favorite were the canned tomatoes they were the best thing ever, they even beat most of the fresh tomatoes, which was very hard to do.    After Poppy passed Grandma M moved into town, and she still continued to can. I remember that the underneath of one section of her counter in the dining room was full of canned tomatoes it was like a wonderful treasure chest full of gold, and she never seemed to run out of her canned jars of goodness.  
In beginning this journey I do not think I really knew what I was getting myself into, but I have been determined from the beginning of the summer that I was going to start canning.

It was a fairly long process that took about 4hrs from start to finish but the time was so worth the final outcome.  I began by gather all my supplies, so off to Wal-Mart mom and I went to get jars, pickling/canning salts and vinegar then we headed to buy tomatoes from the local family farm that we love.  They have the best tomatoes, peaches, watermelons and peppers.  I bought a total of 20lbs of #2 tomatoes that were going to work perfect for canning. 
As mom and I were driving home I told her I was going to get started that evening and thank goodness she talked me out of it otherwise I would have been up until at least midnight and for those of you who know me, know that I am in bed by 10pm at the latest, we are not night owls.
I began by sterilizing my jars, lids and rings, then I blanched, peeled and cut the cores from all 20lbs of tomatoes, this was the part that took the longest, oh my gosh I thought I was never going to be done. I swear the tomatoes were reproducing in the box every time I turned my back. Finally after all that work I was left with two very large mixing bowls full of peeled and cored tomatoes and their juices.  This began the downward slide of my afternoon of canning and I was super excited about what my end result was going to be!  I began placing the tomatoes into the sterilized jars and placed the lids and rings on each and put them in the water bath to process for 45min.  I wanted to continue to check on their process while they were processing but I have a hard time get the large pot to boil for a couple of reasons. One, it is a very large pot of water that I bought for my canning purposes and secondly, when I bought the darn canning pot there was no lib on top of it and I wasn’t paying attention and just went and paid for it without a lid….darn those minor details!! Kyle tells me all the time that I am horrible about seeing the minor things going on around me; in this instance he was correct
L. 
After the processing time elapsed I pulled the jars from their water bath and placed them on the counter to cool and left them set for 24hrs without touching them, this part was hard as well. I always want to test the libs and pick up the jars and look at them and make sure everything looks good, but the 24hrs of sitting untouched is very important so I abided by the rules. My final product looks fabulous.

This was my final result


I just hope that they taste similar to Grandma M's, I am sure my canning will never taste just like hers because it is hard to replicate perfection but I will try!
Oh and by the way I dream of my downstairs pantry to one day look as full of canned goods as this one.


Until next time……
 

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