One of the reasons we wanted to grow so many (14) tomato plants this year and in previous years was because we wanted to put up our harvest. Jars of homemade marinara, salsa, ketchup and canned tomatoes danced in our heads, and we were giddy with the thought of lining our shelves for the winter with them. Last year our tomato harvest was dismal at best, but this year the sun came out enough to bless us with a bountiful harvest. Too bountiful at times, which doesn't even seem possible in the months of anticipation leading up to plucking that first ripe homegrown tomato.
So with our garden overflowing, Matthew and I rolled up our sleeves, and got to work making those tomato lines shelves a reality. Things were humming along just fine for us as we picked a couple days worth of tomatoes from the garden:
And got to work on our first recipe; a canned salsa from the Ball Blue Book of preserving. We washed, and diced, and chopped, and minced and ended up with a beautiful pot of beautiful brightly colored ingredients:
Now doesn't that picture just scream summer to you!? I love it. As we put our little pot of soon to be salsa on the stove to begin cooking, visions of taco nights and tortilla chip dippin' consumed my brain. I stirred and stirred and stirred some more, until the proper amount of time had passed and our salsa was deemed by the experts to be ready to can. We ladled and wiped rims, stuck on lids and bands, and submerged our treasures into a boiling pot of water. Let me pause here to say how utterly pleased I am to have married a man who will stand by my side in the kitchen for an entire day canning, just because he knows its important to me and wants to be helpful. How did I get this lucky?!!? He is an amazing man!
And now, back to the salsa. After its time was up in the water bath spa, we pulled out our jars and set them to rest on the counter. Look how pretty the finished product turned out!
And that gorgeous little jar of homemade salsa is where the happy part of our story ends. You see, while that salsa may look pretty, and its definitely homemade, and it will look fantastic lining our shelves...it doesn't taste all that great. Not great at all to be honest. We have a delicious organic fresh salsa that we always buy from the store, and haven't had a jar of salsa in our kitchen in many years. I am not quite sure what possessed us to think that jarred salsa from our kitchen was going to taste any less jarred than salsa from a store. Sure, the ingredients are undoubtedly better, but even canned salsa made with love still tastes like canned salsa. What a disappointment.
The day didn't get any better from there. We spent hours (quite literally) boiling, peeling, coring, dicing, and cooking down pound after pound of tomatoes for our next project - tomato sauce. Our kitchen looked like it had been the site of a tomato throwing festival (what is wrong with people?!) and you know what we ended up with? Three whole pint jars of tomato sauce. Only to have me realize at the last minute that tomato sauce isn't actually marinara sauce, which is what I had meant to make all along. Dang it.
At that point, we should have known better and realized that creating homemade tomato products might not be where we want to spend our valuable time. Always a sucker for punishment, a couple days later I decided to try my hand at making both tomato paste and that longed for marinara sauce. Another whole day of washing, cutting, coring, cooking, cooking, cooking and straining only to walk away with a marina sauce so gross tasting that it didn't even make it into jars (and it really did look like the best recipe) and tomato paste that tasted fine but refused to set up in the freezer (too much olive oil?). At this point I threw in the towel and declared a truce. Tomatoes won the battle and the war and I, and my trusty canning jars, are admitting defeat.
However, tomatoes will be spared the fate of previous garden veggies doomed to the do-not-grow-again list, like broccoli (takes up too much room, and damn those blasted little caterpillars), brussel sprouts (never seen a plant invite more pests to the garden party than this one) and the lowly parsnip (yuck, yuck and more yuck - parsnips are yucky). No, tomatoes will get a pass because we love them so - they are easy to grow, pest free, and reward us with a juicy, delicious, tomatoey goodness taste that you just can't find in a grocery store. So they get to stay, and will be planted in much fewer numbers next year but they will also be relegated to the grow, but do-not-ever-ever-attempt-to-can-or-preserve-again-in-any-fashion list. Probably right where they should have been all along.
So with our garden overflowing, Matthew and I rolled up our sleeves, and got to work making those tomato lines shelves a reality. Things were humming along just fine for us as we picked a couple days worth of tomatoes from the garden:
And got to work on our first recipe; a canned salsa from the Ball Blue Book of preserving. We washed, and diced, and chopped, and minced and ended up with a beautiful pot of beautiful brightly colored ingredients:
Now doesn't that picture just scream summer to you!? I love it. As we put our little pot of soon to be salsa on the stove to begin cooking, visions of taco nights and tortilla chip dippin' consumed my brain. I stirred and stirred and stirred some more, until the proper amount of time had passed and our salsa was deemed by the experts to be ready to can. We ladled and wiped rims, stuck on lids and bands, and submerged our treasures into a boiling pot of water. Let me pause here to say how utterly pleased I am to have married a man who will stand by my side in the kitchen for an entire day canning, just because he knows its important to me and wants to be helpful. How did I get this lucky?!!? He is an amazing man!
And now, back to the salsa. After its time was up in the water bath spa, we pulled out our jars and set them to rest on the counter. Look how pretty the finished product turned out!
And that gorgeous little jar of homemade salsa is where the happy part of our story ends. You see, while that salsa may look pretty, and its definitely homemade, and it will look fantastic lining our shelves...it doesn't taste all that great. Not great at all to be honest. We have a delicious organic fresh salsa that we always buy from the store, and haven't had a jar of salsa in our kitchen in many years. I am not quite sure what possessed us to think that jarred salsa from our kitchen was going to taste any less jarred than salsa from a store. Sure, the ingredients are undoubtedly better, but even canned salsa made with love still tastes like canned salsa. What a disappointment.
The day didn't get any better from there. We spent hours (quite literally) boiling, peeling, coring, dicing, and cooking down pound after pound of tomatoes for our next project - tomato sauce. Our kitchen looked like it had been the site of a tomato throwing festival (what is wrong with people?!) and you know what we ended up with? Three whole pint jars of tomato sauce. Only to have me realize at the last minute that tomato sauce isn't actually marinara sauce, which is what I had meant to make all along. Dang it.
At that point, we should have known better and realized that creating homemade tomato products might not be where we want to spend our valuable time. Always a sucker for punishment, a couple days later I decided to try my hand at making both tomato paste and that longed for marinara sauce. Another whole day of washing, cutting, coring, cooking, cooking, cooking and straining only to walk away with a marina sauce so gross tasting that it didn't even make it into jars (and it really did look like the best recipe) and tomato paste that tasted fine but refused to set up in the freezer (too much olive oil?). At this point I threw in the towel and declared a truce. Tomatoes won the battle and the war and I, and my trusty canning jars, are admitting defeat.
However, tomatoes will be spared the fate of previous garden veggies doomed to the do-not-grow-again list, like broccoli (takes up too much room, and damn those blasted little caterpillars), brussel sprouts (never seen a plant invite more pests to the garden party than this one) and the lowly parsnip (yuck, yuck and more yuck - parsnips are yucky). No, tomatoes will get a pass because we love them so - they are easy to grow, pest free, and reward us with a juicy, delicious, tomatoey goodness taste that you just can't find in a grocery store. So they get to stay, and will be planted in much fewer numbers next year but they will also be relegated to the grow, but do-not-ever-ever-attempt-to-can-or-preserve-again-in-any-fashion list. Probably right where they should have been all along.