Canning

Erik and I canned tomato sauce this weekend - it made me think of my family. Canning was always a family affair for the Jansens. Mom would line us up and give us each a job and away we would go. We had quite a sophisticated system going on - we worked like a well-oiled machine. As much as I hated it at the time, I now have very fond memories of those days in my parent's backyard.

Our friends were out of town and were gracious enough to let us use their suite. Canning was not as romantic as my memories of it are, but we set up our own assembly line and made many phone calls to Mom. Our friends have a juicer/pulpifier that we used to make all of our vegetables into a pulp. Super handy to have around. I'm a bit nervous as the recipe I used called for cinnamon. The whole pot smelled strongly of cinnamon which threw me off a bit - we'll have to wait and see how it tastes. I think I'll give it a while to stew before I crack one of these open. And I sadly put all the sauce away before I took a picture so here they are lined up in our closet. We got a dozen quart jars of sauce and three of juice. Not bad for 30lbs of romas. I wasn't planning on doing tomatoes until later in the season, but I was at a farm and asked about "seconds". They gave me the 30 lbs for $12.00. Not bad.