Thirty pounds of tomatoes

This weekend I had my first big adventure with this whole endeavor to eat locally--I canned tomatoes. Thirty pounds of them. An entire bushel. I am still pretty impressed myself, that I actually did it, and didn't chicken out somewhere in the process. I kinda felt like a huge nerd doing it. But as MK said, my lack of local friends is bringing out my Martha Stewart skills. 

I started by heading to Marché Jean-Talon with my very handy trolley (such a good investment). It looked like I had picked the right time to buy my tomatoes--they were everywhere! In strolling the aisles, I discovered herbicide-free tomatoes! I have no idea if they used insecticides, but at least there was one less chemical to contend with. I loaded my cart with the bushel of tomatoes for only $18. 

Once I was back home, I learned just how many tomatoes a bushel makes! My kitchen was full of them. And I had to begin the process of skinning, chopping, cooking, and canning all of these tomatoes. Thankfully, I had the National Center for Home Food Preservation to help me along with clear instructions on preparing the crushed tomatoes and then canning them. While washing the tomatoes, I made a little X with my knife in the bottom of each tomato.  This helped them split more easily when they were in the boiling water--I found that they didn't split well on their own. The skinning part was easy--and actually kind of fun. I didn't so much enjoy quartering the tomatoes, because it seemed to take FOR-EV-ER. The cooking part didn't take very much time--about 10 min. Then into the jars they went. With my first batch, I didn't have a canning funnel, which meant tomatoes went everywhere. I definitely recommend a canning funnel (it has a wide, short mouth at the bottom). I don't have a canning pot, but I do have a 10 L pot from Ikea that held just enough water to cover the pint jars that I used. The rattling of the jars on the bottom of the pan was a bit annoying, but not annoying enough to run out and buy a canning pot. 

So my Saturday's efforts left me with 16 pint jars (500 ml) of tomatoes. I am quite pleased. I use a lot of canned tomatoes in the winter, so I don't know how far these will take me, but at least I will be purchasing far fewer cans of tomatoes this winter. $18 worth of tomatoes left me with 16 pints of fresh, locally grown tomatoes--I think that is a steal!