Canning Day!

Today was a long & busy day. We started with church and then home for lunch. After lunch, I gathered my supplies for making tomato soup. I took my big 22 quart pot, butter, sugar, onion & corn starch and 24 pint and 12 quart jars. I prefer to can in pints since my little family isn't up to eating a quart in one sitting. Once we got there, I started washing and cutting the tomatoes that my parents had already picked while Steve got ready to move our bed. Well, not our bed, but Laural's bed. Some time ago, I needed space and my parents needed extra beds for company, so we took one of our twin beds over to lend them. Since Laural is now 4.5 years old, I think it's time she moved into a regular bed, so Steve and Travis loaded it into Brian's truck and took it over to our house while I continued to work on the tomatoes. It is currently sitting in our kitchen. We will have to clean and rearrange her room a little tomorrow so we will have a place for it. By the time they got back from delivering the bed, I was a little more than half way done with cutting the tomatoes. They filled the 22 quart pot a little over 3/4 full.

My jars, ready to go.

It took the tomatoes about an hour to cook down and then, I had to sieve them. Turning the crank wasn't the worst part - holding the pot and sieve handles together made my hand so tired!

After getting all the juice and pulp that I could get out of all those tomatoes, it was time to add the other ingredients - 3 sticks of butter, 20 tbsp. of sugar and 3 tbsp. of salt. After it came to a boil, I added 10 tbsp. of cornstarch and let it cook for 20 minutes.

Then the fun began - putting in the jars. It went faster than I thought it would. I ended up with 24 pints and a partial quart. I would done another pint jar but I was out of jars.

I am SO pleased to have so much soup to put up! The last time I did soup, I only got 7 pints and I added too much salt. It wasn't the greatest. It would have been great without the salt.

There are still a bunch of tomatoes that will be ready on Tuesday, so I am deciding on whether I want to do more or give them away. It's a lot of work but it sure will be nice to have the soup put up. I'll have to think about it a little more.