What's cooking? Tomatoes!

TMS and I belong to this awesome CSA - that's Community Supported Agriculture, not Confederate States of America.  The farm is just a few miles from us and not only do we get great produce as our weekly share, but they also have a farm stand where you can buy produce and goods from local merchants.  Last week, in addition to picking up our weekly share (hello, watermelon!) I purchased a 25 lb. box of "seconds" tomatoes from the farm stand and over the weekend I canned some tomato sauce.

To start, I boiled the tomatoes for about a minute, then plunged them into ice water.  This makes it easier to remove the skins.  After skinning them, I cut them in half width-wise and squeezed the seeds and extra water out, then threw them in a strainer to get even more water out.  I had to do all of this in batches - 25 pounds of tomatoes is a LOT of fruit and made quite a mess of my tiny kitchen.

This part of the process left my sink looking like a crime scene.

 After skinning and draining (sounds gruesome!), I cut out the tough spots by the stems, quartered the remaining pieces and threw them into a large pot.  I turned the stove on to about medium heat and let the tomatoes do their thing.  I found that with so many tomatoes, I had to wait for some of them to cook down before I could add more.  I did not, however, have to mash them at all - the cooking made them just fall apart. 

I let my tomatoes cook for about 4 hours, which reduced it by about 1/3.  Then, I followed the instructions on canning as found on Pick Your Own.  If you've never done any canning, or if you're like me and it's been a while, I highly recommend you check out Pick Your Own.  It is a great resource for not only canning/pickling/jam-making recipes, but also tells you when different types of produce are in season.  Here are my delicious pint-sized (literally) results:

Delicious!

I ended up with a total of 4 pints canned and 3 pints of rough chopped tomatoes I bagged and threw in the freezer.  I had one extra jar that I couldn't fit into the pot, and I was not about to do a 45-minute water bath for one jar, so I just threw that one in the fridge and used it the following day for pasta sauce.  So yummy!

This summer, I've made strawberry jam, pickled turnips, two varieties of pickles, and now these tomatoes.  I'm looking forward to apple picking in the fall for applesauce.  What are your favorite things to can/preserve/pickle?