So, I was a bit bored on Friday and thought, why not try drying and canning some tomatoes? My first purchase of Ball canning jars. A momentous occasion. I have warm feelings towards Ball canning jars in the manner of Mr. Garrison Keillor who has extolled the virtue of home canning on numerous occasions. If anyone has time and can find the PHC monologue on this topic from the late 90s, please tell me.
I sliced a LOT of tomatoes and laid them out on baking sheets - Romas and cherries alike - with some salt, pepper, olive oil, and garlic.
3-4 hours later (for cherries, more like 5-6 for romas) we have shriveled little tomato blobs.
Then I got my jars going - several minutes in boiling water to sterilize
The tomatoes needed more acid - so they took a bath in some boiling vinegar
Then, into the hot hot jars
The jars, lidded and ringed, then spent a solid 35 minutes in boiling water themselves, in order to encourage the jars to seal (and by jars, I mean one jar - 3 baking sheets of tomatoes yielded a pint of sundried jarred tomatoes) Voila!
Well, at this point, the canning bug had bit me pretty good - so I went and took advantage of $.99/lb peaches and canned some of those as well. This time, I got three jars out of the batch.
Yay for preserving! Here's hoping there's no botulism!
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