I canned!

So yesterday was the big day. I had a bunch of tomatoes and needed to do something with them before they all went bad. Canning was the answer. I read a bunch of books and blogs and internet sites and figured out my method of attack. I needed a lot of stuff, but had a lot of it on hand. Just had to buy jars, and I got a $10 kit that had the jar grabber, a magnetic lid grabber, a funnel, and a bubble getter-outer/head measure-er thingy.

I decided my best method would be to hot pack the tomatoes in water. So while I got all the giant pots boiling, I started the job of boiling and blanching and peeling and cutting all the tomatoes. This was WAY more work than I thought it would be. It ended up taking over 2.5 hour between starting to boil the tomatoes and putting the jars in the bath for sealing.

After I had all the tomatoes peeled and cut, I re-boiled them in water for 5 minutes, and then used that mixture to fill the jars. I wound up with 5 quarts. I thought it would be more, but that is fine.

I had to leave them sit for 24 hours after sealing, and I think it worked! All the lids have the buttons pulled down so I guess I did it right. Woohoo!