I’m finally going to do it! I’m finally going to can something.
I talked about it last year or the year before. But then life got in the way–per usual!
I ordered this
canning kit from Amazon and these
jars. They are only one cup serving sizes because we don’t need that much pizza sauce at once. I think the cup size will be the perfect amount. We eat easy homemade pizza once a week or once every other week. I simply smother pizza sauce on naan bread and add toppings like broccoli and mushrooms. #quickdinnersforworkingmoms
I found a
recipe that does not require me to peel the tomatoes. I just couldn’t bring myself to have to do that much work. #lazygirlcanning
Aside from the fact that this recipe will take a long time to cook (about 90 minutes), I don’t think it’s going to be too much work. Hopefully it’s easy enough that I can do one batch at a time, as we harvest tomatoes out of the garden. I need to be sure to find an easy place to store the canning stuff (it all nests inside the big pot). There won’t be a convenient spot in the kitchen–it would have to be stored up high and behind a lot of things. Maybe I’ll store it in the bathroom closet for easier access!
I’m finally getting closer to fulfilling the vision in Barbara Kingsolver’s memoir about turning her home into a mini-farm–
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. By the way, Barbara apparently sent her children to Montessori school and had this to say about how it helped shift her parenting paradigm:
There’s something I have said so often to my children
that now they chant it back to me: “You can do hard things.” I sent my
kids to a Montessori preschool, and thank heavens I did, because most of
what I learned about parenting came from those wonderful Montessori
teachers. They straightened me out about self-esteem. There’s this
myth that self-esteem comes from making everything easy for your
children and making sure they never fail. If they never encounter
hardship or conflict, the logic goes, they’ll never feel bad about
themselves. Well, that’s ridiculous. That’s not even a human life.
Kids learn self-esteem from mastering difficult tasks. It’s as
simple as that. The Montessori teachers told me to put my two-year-old
on a stool and give her the bread, give her the peanut butter, give her
the knife — a blunt knife — and let her make that sandwich and
get peanut butter all over the place, because when she’s done, she’ll
feel like a million bucks. I thought that was brilliant. Raising
children became mostly a matter of enabling them and standing back and
watching. When a task was difficult, that’s when I would tell them,
“You can do hard things.” Both of them have told me they still say to
themselves, “I can do hard things.” It helps them feel good about who
they are, not just after they’ve finished, but while they’re engaged in
the process.
5 Comments
Libby
Hello. Canning is fun! If you plan on canning your pizza sauce you should use a recipe designed for canning. Particularly, you need to add lemon juice or citric acid for acidification to make it safe for water bath canning. Here is a good link. Enjoy!
Libby
Hello. Canning is fun! If you plan on canning your pizza sauce you should use a recipe designed for canning. Particularly, you need to add lemon juice or citric acid for acidification to make it safe for water bath canning. Here is a good link. Enjoy!
Tawny
Also, if your garden gets ahead of you and you have the freezer space, you can stuff your tomatoes in the freezer whole, and can them later. I did that when I had 30 tomato plants and a chest freezer and it worked like a charm. (I never peeled the tomatoes either – it sounded like way too much work!)
Amber
We did this and added a tsp of realemon juice to each 8 oz jar for acidity. I used a different recipe and ended up needing to add tomato paste (we like ours thick), but still it was worthwhile and so nice to have on hand. We too make homemade pizza once a week. I also like making the dough ahead and having it in the freezer. I'll be interested to see how yours turns out.
violarulz/ducksandbooks
Please follow safety guidelines when canning, especially tomatoes! Pressure canning or just processing and freezing (way easier with kiddos around!).
Here's a link to the USDA tomato canning guide, I hope it helps and have fun 🙂
http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/usda/GUIDE03_HomeCan_rev0715.pdf