I'm back!
I have been off and on all social media for awhile. Life has been busy and I just haven't taken the time to sit down and post anything. I'm only posting now because I'm awake with heartburn and can't get back to sleep. 😁
The last 3 or 4 weeks I have finally gotten some ripe tomatoes. I thought they would never come in! I didn't get as much as I would have liked but that's ok. For our first garden, I think we did great! I decided to try out Jaimie salsa recipe from @mericanhomestead and can as much as I could.
The tomatoes, jalapenos and peppers are from the garden. 😁
First thing and most time consuming is prepping the ingredients.
Red onions.
Sweet peppers.
Jalapenos. These were so hot they burned my fingers. It made for a long day. Any tips for getting jalapeno oil off your hands? I tried milk, olive oil and rubbing alcohol. Nothing worked. 🤔
I also threw in some cilantro.
All these ingredients look so beautiful mixed together!
Now the fun part 😊
I made a small slice in each Tomato. This was my first time doing it on my own and only my second time doing it ever. I was pretty sure that we did this.
I started a pot of water and got it hot. Added a few tomatoes at a time. They call this blanching I believe. The skin comes right off. It was simple but took awhile.
See the skin coming off? That's when you know it's done and can pull it out of the water.
After pulling the skin off all the tomatoes, I juiced them.
I ended up with 12 cups of tomatoes.
I added all the ingredients into a stock pot and brought it to a boil.
This recipe called for 9 pint jars. But I decided to use 4 quart jars and 3 pint jars. That's what I had available without needing to buy any.
Wiping off the rims of the jars so the lids seal properly.
It's time to put them into the water bath. It took about an hour for the water bath to be ready. I didn't have the lid on and I think that was a huge mistake. Once I put the lid on the pot, it was boiling in no time.
Brought it to a boil and set the timer for 20 minutes. Once my timer went off, I took the lid off and shut my stove off. I let it sit for another 5 minutes or so.
All my jars popped. That was an exciting sound to hear! It took me all afternoon by myself. My husband @dwells was awesome and took some of these photos for me. It was alot of work and in the end, TOTALLY WORTH IT!
Thank you for checking out my post! I love reading your comments. Any tips or suggestions are always welcome.
Until next time....