More canning fun

And the weekend brought with it the arrival of my Mom's pressure canner and thus, more tomato canning.

First, I spent about 45 minutes peeling and semi-deseeding a lot of tomatoes, here is about 1/4 of the tomatoes:


And then Mr. R took over so I could sterilize the needed jars, rings, and lids (after a trip to the WalMart):


Then I got the tomatoes heating up so they could be "hot packed" My books all debated the merit of hot packing vs. cold vs. raw packing, so I opted for the safest.


And then began filling the jars - a bit of a messy proposition. I could have used a funnel-like device, but it wasn't a big deal - I was only dealing with 10 jars. I also added a squirt of bottled lemon juice to each jar, just to be extra sure that the acidity levels were up.


And into the canner they go - about 10 minutes to vent the release valve then 15 minutes of actual pressurized canning. Then an hour cool down.


In the interim, I strained the pulpy, seedy juice that was left behind (and not used in the jars) to make a tomato juice-like substance - I can use this when I make homemade marinara sauce or to flavor rice.


And here are the cans - the tomatoes lost a little bit of their red color and separated from the water a bit, but all the cans sealed - a success!