Rachel's Reasoning

My Mom's Grandfather, my Great-Grandfather, canned lots of tomatoes. He told us all about it when we went up to see them a few months ago. My Grandmother said she didn't like canning because it was hot work. She said that Grandpa was always the one who did the canning. But since he's old, he can't do it anymore.

Here is what I did with our tomatoes:

I washed the smaller ones first. Put them in the food processor. I made it so that they were  finely chopped. As I was processing them, I put the chopped tomatoes in pans. I used two bigs pots and two smaller pans. I'm not sure how many quarts there were, but there was a lot. In the end, I got 14 jars filled. Then Mom and I between 1-3am put the canning pot of water on the stove to boil water to seal the jars. It takes 40-45min. to seal them, and you have to have the water a rolling boil, so we put half of them in the fridge to keep overnight. The water was boiling when we put the jars in, but then stopped because of the coolness of the jars. It was 2am before it even started to boil... AHHHH! The tray to put the jars in only hold 6 jars, and it takes 45min. to boil them. Another AHHHH! We put the other jars in the fridge...

Oh, yes, after I put the water on to boil, I got out our banana peppers to clean and soak. I cleaned them, cut two slits in each, and put them in salt water to soak for 12-18 hours... such a long time! We didn't have enough vinager we needed to pickle that day anyways... I thought that we would get some from Dollar General yesterday, but we never did. They had soaked for 20-some hours. We pickled them today.

On Thursday night, we sealed the more of the tomato jars. One disaster did happen while we doing this: Mom was putting the jars in, and went to take one out... and guess what? It was too big so the bottom broke off of it. It was horrid! We had to take all the jars out and DUMP OUT all the BOILING WATER that took us SO LONG to even get BOILING... (:o( Not only had we lost the boiling water, but a whole jar of TOMATO! Mom was mad about the tomato rather than the water and jar...

Here is what I did with the banana peppers:

Let them soak for however long. Then, since we forgot to tell Dad to get vinegar, so we had to put them in the fridge in a bowl. Then yesterday morning, Amanda and Eric went to Dollar General and got vinegar. I didn't put the ingredients in the pot to boil until about 3:50. Then Eric and I packed the peppers into jars. It took about two hours for it to boil, but part of the reason it wouldn't boil was because we had a big fan blowing in the kitchen to try to keep it cool. Then we poured the hot, boiling liquid in the jars on top of the peppers. Then we put them in the boiling-water-canner to seal. So, I learned a few things about canning: You have to make sure you have all the ingredients before you start your canning; all the stuff you need. It takes a long time to can, and it's very hot!

The canning book we used Ball Blue Book of Preseving. This is the recipe I used for the peppers:

4 quarts peppers (we used bananan)

1 1/2 cups canning salt (we used sea salt)

4 1/4 quarts water, divided

1/4 cup sugar

2 tbsps. horseradish, (we didn't use any)

2 cloves garlic

2 1/2 quarts vinegar

Cut two slits in each pepper. Dissolve salt in water. Pour over peppers and let stand 12-18 hours in a cool place. Drain; rinse and drain thoroughly. Comebine 2 cups water and remaining ingredients in a large saucepot. Simmer 15 minutes. Discard garlic. Bring pickling to a boil. Pack peppers into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Ladle hot liquid over peppers, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two-piece caps. Process hlaf-pints and pints 10 minutes in a boiling-water canner.

NOTE: When cutting or seeding hot peppers, wear rubber gloves to prevent hands from being burned. I did NOT wear gloves and when I was done cutting the slits, my hands were on FIRE! I would recommend if you are doing hot peppers, use gloves!

OH, one other thing: I will hosting the Homesteading Carnival this Monday. So I need lots of submissions, so please, if you have any... If you have a post you would like to submit, then go to the Homesteading Carnival to enter. I will be hosting it at my homeschoolblogger.com blog: The Milk & Honey Tea-House. I will try to have everything ready! But I need your submissions!! Thanks!!!

Thanks for reading about my first ever canning experience!

Rachel