Wordless Wednesday: Solar Oven Tomatoes

Visited the farm. Picked some pear tomatoes. Popped them in the awesome solar oven for the day. Shared them with internet friends at a preserve swap and tasting.  How satisfying.

Canning Tomatoes for the First Time: Some Lessons Learned

Although we've now been canning, mostly successfully, for a few years, this year we've been taking on bigger projects.  First those pesky peaches and now 3 bushels of blasted tomatoes.

We shot this great time lapse video of our twelve hour day that certainly demonstrates the busy-ness but there's much it is not showing.  

Here we are first thing in the morning...

... and a tomato toast 12 hours later.

Here are our notes for next year:

1. Source your tomatoes early.  We bought one gorgeous organically grown bushel from Highmark Farms but should have ordered more.  By the time we figured out how much we actually needed, they were sold out and we were out of time. We ended up getting some lower quality ones from an Italian Grocer on the Danforth but they were a pain to work with and I probably should have headed straight for the food terminal.

2. Next year we'll grow more paste tomatoes.  We grew some Amish Paste, Romas and San Marzanos but not nearly enough.

3. We teamed up with our friend Catherine and foolishly believed that the three of us could handle two toddlers while processing these tomatoes.  

We had a plan.  I made home made play dough.  We rented movies.  But troublesome toddlers don't care for duplo towers with Ryan when they could be standing behind you when you are blanching tomatoes in boiling water.  Thanks goodness for Ergos.  Next year the toddlers will be banished to their grandparents. They added a significant amount of stress at random intervals.

4. Packing tomatoes in water is a crock. We tried a few different methods as this was our first attempt with tomatoes but this simply did not work and we even read the instructions. We ended up hot packing half tomatoes and it worked out beautifully. See lesson #6.

5. We really needed more people. Two couples would have made this much easier.  With 3 couples (and zero mobile babies) we could easily double our yield.

6. Next year we will do things in the reverse order.  I can't remember the reasoning but we packed half tomatoes and them made sauce.  If we had made sauce then packed tomatoes we would have let the sauce cook longer with less urgency and would have had tomato juice to top up the tomatoes. That said we have used all that delicious tomato juice to make bread, cook couscous and I think Andrew and Catherine are making ceasars right now.

7. We need those cool outdoor propane burners like Well Preserved have.  We have one burner on the BBQ that held the big canner and we kept the lids warm on the actual bbq.  The running back and forth to the kitchen was pretty intense.  We do have a sink and water outside and otherwise it was a pretty good set up, but we'd like to move more of it out side next year. The kitchen was trashed. We also need a bigger pot and like 6 more pairs of oven mitts.

That said, it really was a smashing success. We did a few things right, like preparing the day before, having multiple sets of tools and extra pots, and spending a beautiful September day out on the deck   We have a nice haul of tomatoes and sauce for both our families and we had a pretty great time and even got the babies bathed at the end of the day. Sigh.

Any other tips for us?   

How does your family make sauce and can tomatoes? 

Anything else we should know for next year?

Twelve Hours of Tomatoes in Two Minutes

This video is meant to be part of a much larger post about our adventures in canning tomatoes but that will just have to come later in the week as Ryan and I are just too excited to share this.





Here is a time lapse that Ryan and I made yesterday.  We are canning three bushels of tomatoes with Catherine, her little girl Penelope and Rebecca.  Hazel and the kittens pop in and out too; Mainly to eat the tomato skins.  We turned the camera on at 9:00 in the morning and took the last shot 12 hours later when the kitchen was almost clean.


We're really quite pleased with it and would love it if you took a look and let us know what little detail caught your eye.

Wordless Wednesday: What the Heck is This Tomato?

 These lovely tomatoes grew in a friend's garden...

 and nobody knows what they are.

 Here's one ripened up.

Here it is for scale.

Here's the inside, about to go on a burger. Lots of seeds, quite strong skin, perfectly symmetrical from the middle line. Delicious too.  Any idea what it could be? 

Wordless Wednesday: Gorgeous Zapotec Pleated Tomatoes

Zapotec Pleated Tomatoes are pretty much the best looking tomatoes ever. 

project 365: week thirty three: August 13th, 2011 - August 19th, 2011

 August 13th, 2011 Yellow Pear Cherry Tomatoes.  One of our favourites.

 August 14th, 2011 Visiting a friend's pool.

 August 15th, 2011 Rebecca has been asking us to draw things for her.  Mostly A, B's; birds; cars and fruit. She gets mad if you do it wrong.

 August 16th, 2011 She's pretty good with a drill. 

 August 17th, 2011 The tomatoes are really coming now.

 August 18th, 2011 A whole morning spent photographing the tomatoes, then eating them for lunch.

August 19th, 2011 Catherine and I picked these this morning.  I love August.

Wordless Wednesday: BBQ Pizza for Rosa

Grow your own tomatoes and BBQ your pizza! You'll never look back.  Instructions for grilling pizza can be found here, in one of our very first posts.

Wordless Wednesday: Vintage Tomato Seed Pack

Our Weekend Farm Visit in Photographs

We have had such a lovely weekend visiting Ryan's coworker Almerinda's farm in Consecon Ontario in Prince Edward County.  Gorgeous views, perfect weather and trading heirloom beans on a United Empire Loyalist farm is exactly what we all needed.

The lilacs were in full bloom.

A walk in the deserted apple orchard, also in full bloom.  We'll be visiting in September to taste them all.  It appears to have been quite a diverse selection of full sized trees, some cider apples, some for cooking, some for eating, and a pear so sour it steals your soul.

Some moss.

Lucky Hazel found a bone.

I spent a lot of time photographing pollinators but missed the shot of big fuzzy bumblebees despite them being plentiful. 

Gorgeous Lilacs line almost an entire side of the farm.

I love the variation in them. These ones are lighter and rounder.

Almost ready. 

bare feet and homemade quilts.

Ryan is in heaven sorting and mapping tomatoes with Almerinda. 

These guys came home with me.  That's a Livingstone Golden Queen.  The Livingstone Tomatoes are fascinating.

HAzel is in her element.

Check out the colour of this clover!

Spectacular Allium.

More pollination. All the trees were in bloom and it was very busy.

Gorgeous sage.

Delicious Chives. 

Looks like we're going to need a wagon.

Every farm house needs a swing.

We planted a lot of tomatoes. 

More tomatoes and some prize winning garlic. 

Rebecca got to bring this fantastic desk home with her.  Thanks! 

Last but not least, the perfect, fantastic, lovely barn. 

Everything is ready to milk some cows. 

Pretty great view of Lake Ontario from the dairy room milk house.

Another great view, this one from the cow stalls. 

We really love this barn. 

Sigh, we need a barn.