Tom and I went to the Clearspring Produce Auction on Thursday and in a marvel of restraint came home with only 4 1/2 bushels of tomatoes. There was a group of 5 pecks of Romas I really wanted, and a lot of 5 pecks of really nice jalapenos, and I almost bought Debbie a pallet of 60 ornamental gourds and pumpkins.
But we were good and only came home with canning tomatoes.
All that restraint went out the window when I went to the Columbia City Farmer’s Market on Saturday.
I came home with about 4 quarts of hot peppers for hot sauce, an 8 pound head of cabbage for sauerkraut, two baby ginger roots, a loaf of Italian style bread, and two beautiful eggplants.
Today we started canning tomatoes.
Everything started out neat and tidy. But pretty soon we had every burner covered.
Lana threatened us with bodily harm if we cooked tomatoes in her water bath canner, so we took a picture to prove we were being good.
Not surprisingly, things got out of hand.
And at one point a cork trivet stuck to the bottom of a pan, and I put it back on the stove.
Tom and I looked at one another for bit, “what is on the bottom of that pan that’s making it smoke so?” We soon answered our own question, and in a Gordon-esque move, hurled the smoking trivet out the back door.
But by mid-afternoon most everything was done – because we ran out of jars. We still have 25 quarts of juice to process, and haven’t touched the hot peppers yet.
But we’re mostly done, and it sure looks pretty all cleaned up and the tomatoes in nice rows.
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