A Saucy Summer {canning tomato sauce, salsa and a peek at my canning season}

Hello everyone and welcome to canning season! Haha I just felt like saying that since it feels like it’s all I’ve been doing lately. 😴

I feel like I’ve been canning non-stop, but looking back at the dates on my jars I’ve just done a few things back to back with a week or so break.

The latest and greatest food on my canning list is toe-maye-toes.

I love tomatoes, but I’m beginning to get sick of the overabundance. So as with any other thing, when it’s in season and a good price, I buy a lot and preserve it.

This year, my canning goals for tomatoes was a bit lofty. In my head I ticked off all the jars I wanted to can. “Oh hey, I’ll just do 20 cans of spagetti sauce, 20 jars of salsa, like 8 of ketchup and 8 of red enchilada sauce.”

Eating.

My.

Words.

Y’all.

First of all, I would need 40 lbs of tomatoes to accomplish this. Which worked out to be about $60 worth. Hmm. No….?

Secondly, when I took home my *ahem* 20lbs of gorgeous tomatoes, I rather humorously misjudged how long it takes tomatoes to cook down.

There’s a reason they say to use paste tomatoes.

That reason is largely to avoid the transformation of yourself into an irate raving lunatic because your tomato sauce literally took 6 hours to can.

Six hours.

But I got some lovely photos out of it at least. 😄 I cut up 10lbs of peeled tomatoes and made 3 1/2 pints of sauce with it.

The 20 pints will not be happening.

Oh well.

The sauce was absolutely gorgeous though. We ended up having pasta that night with some of the extra sauce.

Here is a look at the tomato sauce (left) and salsa (far right).

The salsa is very good, I used the recipe for Roasted Tomato-Lime Salsa from the book Foolproof Preserving: A Guide to Small Batch Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Condiments & More, which I mentioned I was borrowing in a few of last year’s canning posts. I ended up purchasing a copy because I think it is wonderously helpful.

I love the small batches, unique recipes and easy to follow directions in this book. Not paid to say that, just truly love it. 😄

Here’s a little peek at the other things I’ve been canning⤵⤵⤵

Yummy fruit…cherry preserves, peach jam, canned peach chunks in apple juice, applesauce (looks strangely white).

Pickled things & condiments…dill pickle spears, pickled watermelon rind, and zucchini relish.

It’s been a saucy summer and thankfully I’m running out of things to can!

Any canning plans for yourself? I’ve been admiring the canning posts here on WordPress. I love all the unique and beautiful food!

Do you have any favorite home canned foods?