I finally decided I'd break down and can at least one of my tomato harvests instead of giving it away. (Just looking at them gives me heartburn at 35 weeks pregnant!) I considered my options of how to can them. For some wild reason, I thought canning spaghetti sauce sounded like a good idea. Maybe because the instructions in the Ball Blue Book of Canning were only a small paragraph long. Funny how a one sentence instruction can take HOURS to follow. (ie. Boil the tomato puree on medium high heat until it reduces to about half it's volume.)
Sigh.
Next year, I'm canning diced tomatoes like I did last year. That's a paragraph of instructions that takes a proportionate amount of time to follow! Anyway, my spaghetti sauce canning experience was rather disheartening, seeing as all these tomatoes,
And all this mess (and that's just the stove!)
Brought me 4 whopping quarts of sauce after 5 hours of constant work. (That's not including the processing, when I could finally play with my amazingly self entertained child again.)
Kind of a defeating sight, huh?
While this canning experience lacked the usual thrill of feeling amazingly industrious and domestic, it gave me a whole new appreciation for tomato sauce. I value my experience, because I learned first hand just how many tomatoes it takes to make a bit of sauce, and how long of a process it is. I'll never take a can of tomato sauce for granted again. Thank goodness I have the privilege of living in a place where I can simply go to the store, and stock up on cans and cans of sauce-no 2 hours of stirring splattering tomato puree involved!
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