Now THAT looks like tomato sauce!!!!!

Ok, now for some promised pictures of my canning project yesterday! As I mentioned in the last post, my friend, Madalyn, emailed me some instructions on how she cans tomatoes and I decided to give some of them a try! Yesterday was the day and I snapped some pictures along the way. If after reading this you think you'd like to give it a try, let me know and I'll send you Madalyn's excellent and detailed instructions! Thanks Madalyn! It turned out beautiful!!!

Before I begin, I must give recognition to my dear assistant, without whom, this project would have been so much easier!!! :-) But I wouldn't trade ya, baby girl!




Some of the tomatoes in the rinse bowl.



More of the tomatoes that have had their ends and some bad spots removed. They are waiting to be briefly bowled to loosen the skins for peeling.



Here are the peeled tomatoes. I chopped them up a bit as I moved them to a pot. Unusally I would just cook them down until I had them how I wanted them and then can them, but here is where Madalyn's method diverged. I cooked them, but fairly briefly.



Then came the blender! I "zapped" the tomatoes several times for a few second at a time. Be very careful not to spray yourself and your kitchen with hot tomatoes! I managed to pull this part of the process off with out any major disasters, but came pretty close, despite Madalyn's warnings! :-)




I then dumped it into a sieve and mushed it through with a spoon, the sieve catching most of the seeds, some pieces of skin that I hadn't got off and chunky pulp.



And here is the BEAUTIFUL result!!!! Now, THAT looks like tomato sauce! Quite different from the chunky sauce with lots of seeds that I was previously making.



And now, guess what I need to do tomorrow! As you can see our pepper plants are still going like gang busters!!! :-/