So, listen. I’m not saying I’m bad at homesteading, but if the zombie apocalypse hits and someone hands me a tomato and says, “Preserve this for winter,” I’m handing it back and asking for a pre-sealed can of SpaghettiOs.
Late last summer in a tragic display of optimism, Pinterest confidence, and a YouTube binge, I decided to can tomatoes for the first time. You know, like our great-grandmothers used to do. With love. And patience. And probably a lot less swearing too.
The dream was warm shelves of mason jars glowing ruby red with fresh tomatoey goodness, waiting to become stews, soups, and sauces. The reality was that my small kitchen looked like someone had been murdered by marinara.
Various friends contributed 20 pounds of tomatoes to the cause. I wanted " a lot" because
I assumed they’d shrink like laundry in a dryer. (Spoiler: they don’t. They multiply. Kind like gremlins. Angry, juicy gremlins.)
Anywho...
Blanching tomatoes means dropping them into boiling water until the skins split, then shocking them in ice water so you can peel them easily.
In theory.
In practice, it means standing over a vat of molten lava, praying you don’t get steam-burned into next week, and chasing slippery tomatoes around a bowl like you’re in some kind of Food Network-themed Olympic event.
In any event, I peeled maybe seven before I started questioning every life choice I’d made to get to this point.
So, they say to sterilize your jars in hot water. Easy, right?
Unless you’re me, and somehow manage to fill your largest pot with so much water that when it boils, it becomes an erupting volcano of liquid fury, searing the very essence of your eyebrows off.
RIP to my fingerprints. I didn’t need those anyway...
At this point, I was delirious, sticky, and talking to the tomatoes like they were a class of misbehaving kindergartners: “You sit down in that jar right now, little mister.”
My counter was covered in seeds, my floor looked like a crime scene, and I had used every kitchen towel I owned -- and a few mismatched socks to boot. One jar slipped and rolled off the counter like it, too, was done with my nonsense. It survived, somehow, unlike my dignity.
Ah, now the water bath! A final boiling of the filled jars to ensure preservation. Except I used a pot that was just barely big enough. So of course, water sloshed everywhere. It hissed. It spit. One jar tipped over and started doing the cha-cha on the bottom of the pot.
I stood there with tongs, a dish towel, and the hollow stare of a person who had seen things.
Out of 10 jars, eight sealed properly, which means technically I’m a success -- that, and I just pronounced "properly" just like that Dyson vacuum guy ("I like things that work prop-er-leah" The other two are going straight into tonight’s pasta because -- well -- I’m not ready to talk about it.
Would I do it again?
Well, ask me in a year, when I’ve finally scraped the last bit of tomato paste off my backsplash.
But for now, I’ll be over here in my tomato-stained cooking apron, smelling faintly of crushed dreams, onion, garlic, and a hint of basil, proudly serving sauce I made myself—with only a 40% chance of botulism.
If I invite you over for supper, bon appétit!
Moral of the story? Canning tomatoes is a beautiful tradition best done by someone else. Or at least with wine. Yeah, definitely wine.
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