Sunday Lunch (and more canning)

After a long day of canning I made myself a sandwich of ham, cheddar cheese, sliced tomato and mayo on toasted ciabatta bread:


It really hit the spot. Three trays of tomatoes later, we ended up with another 34 jars of tomatoes:


After setting aside 12 for my grandmother, that left 11 jars each for my mom and me. Overall a very productive weekend.

Canning Tomatoes

This weekend my mom and I took part in our annual summer ritual of canning tomatoes. We've been doing this together for years and while we enjoy the quality time together, we also love the end product - jars of sweet Jersey tomatoes sealed at the peak of freshness just waiting to be opened and enjoyed some cold winter day.

This year we canned more tomatoes then we've ever canned before (and my sore body is still begging for mercy). We stood in the same place for more than 4 hours blanching, peeling and seeding all these tomatoes (plus another tray that was already in the kitchen when I took this picture):


... turning them into this:


By the time we were nearing the end of the fourth tray we were almost weeping in pain. After some serious stretching we cooked down all three pots of tomatoes and put them in these jars:


When all was said and done we had 31 jars of gorgeous ruby red tomatoes: