Tomato Basil Soup

Ah, tomato basil soup. I have avoided you for almost 30 years because I don't like tomato soup. How could I have been so wrong??

I ordered some up for the baby at this restaurant we were at, since he loves tomatoes. I tasted it myself out of curiosity and it was delish!! So then I had to try and copycat it at home. All that is in it is a big can of whole tomatoes, a ton of basil from my garden and some cream. I decided to put some onions in it too. Once it cooked for awhile, I buzzed it with the hand blender and it was good to go! Parents and babies alike think it is a keeper!

Stuffed Sauce

I have posted about my spaghetti sauce before, but I make it almost every week, so here we go again! I tend to make them all slightly differently, depending on what I have on hand. This sauce is a good way to use a ton/eat a lot of veggies. This time, my base was onions, garlic, mushrooms, celery and orange peppers.
I brown them for a few minutes, and then add some of my frozen, crushed tomatoes. Then cook for a long time, probably 45-60 minutes. This looks like a ton of sauce, but it cooks down some, and usually we end up with just a little more sauce than we need to finish a pack of noodles.

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!