Canned Tomatos!

In much thanks to lovely Bountiful Baskets, we got all these lovely goods for $27.50. On a normal week it is only $16.50 (including tax/shipping), but this last week they offered an extra 20lbs of tomatoes for an additional $11, we just couldn't resist. This is also where we got out 25lbs of peaches to make peach jam and just regular canned peaches, and also accumulated enough oranges to make orange marmalade. I am telling you, these guys are the best, and I love getting our produce from them. period.

So we pulled out the good ol canning gear and canned (why do they call it canning when they are really in jars after all? Oh well...) those yummy-nesses. We love tomatoes in their many shapes, forms, purees, sauces and salsas; so it took us a little while to figure out just exactly what we were going to do with them. But after much debate we figured we'd get our most/best use if we did about half in diced form and half in tomato sauce. We didn't add anything extra other than the usual lemon juice it asked for, so that it would be in a simplest form, easy to change around for future meals. Either or both could easily be used for spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, salsa, tomato soup, tomato drink (which Michael loves, and I just have a hard time wrapping around it being so yummy to just drink it straight), etc. . .the list could go on of all the things we could use these basic levels of canned tomatoes. All you have to do is add the right seasoning and you'd be set!

And I will have to always give forever thanks to my good sister Keri (from Desire 2 Create) and her husband Isaac, because they are the ones that initialy got me excited about canning. My very first canning experience was in their home, making yummy salsa while we watched/listened to General Conference. Good times, good fun, so thank you muchly, canning is a wonderful blessing in our lives!

So if you dare to see, here is the lovely goodnesses in picture form: . . ..

And we've already transformed one of the jars of diced tomatoes into salsa, we just added a little more lemon juice, salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder, and little bit of parsley (if we had them on hand I would have put real garlic and real onions, but the powders still worked to add nice flavor). But you could really add things however you want, for whatever taste you'd want, I love how versatile it is! Maybe in future posts I will actually show the salsa and them some homemade chips we made to go with it, yum, good old chips from scratch!

It isn't too hard to find canning recipes, google can take care of you for that. But if you want the recipe/directions we used, we got it straight from the "Ball Blue Book of Preserving" that came with our water bath canner when we bought it and I found an online sort of version you can go here.

Anyway, thanks again for stopping by! Hope you have a splendid day with much yumminess!