Canning Tomato Sauce & First Batch of Salsa

The garden harvest is full steam ahead! We’re out of pickle season, and now its tomatoes, late herbs, and peppers for this round. Potatoes too– although I only grew an experimental small amount of those.

I really want to expand my canning repetoire, so for the first time, I made Italian seasoned red sauce, using nearly all ingredients from our gardens. Tomatoes mostly, plus oregano, a little garlic, a tiny bit of thyme, and basil. We chopped, heated and liquified it, and then canned it. Shayla, Tad, and Darcy came over to help and they were tremendous help to me. My right arm can’t do many repetitive-motion moves with much force or it hurts and then weakens quickly. As it was, I just ran the canner, organized everything, and chopped the garlic and herbs.

As the sauce was being processed, we continued to chop up more tomatoes, onions, garlic, and cilantro for the salsa that Gerick was making when he got home from work. We finished off the last jar of homemade salsa last week, so it seems appropriate that our first batch of salsa gets made today. Almost all of the pre-prep chopping work was DONE, and the dishes were DONE when Gerick walked in the door. I pulled my jars of sauce out of the canner to cool and put the next set of empty jars in to heat, and then got out of the way!

Gerick was thrilled. Sometimes he feels overwhelmed with all the work he does, so this time the rest of us (all of whom home and free that day) took on the bulk of it. He just oversaw the final steps of throwing the salsa together and supervising its heating and canning. It was all done in next to no time. I can’t believe how much faster this goes with help!

One can of tomato sauce didn’t seal– and I gave that to Tad & Darcy to refrigerate and use as they liked. One can of salsa also failed to seal (used rings) and that was given to Shayla as thanks for helping us. (Tad & Darcy also got our leftover batch of salsa from our first harvest party earlier.)

Leftovers got put in bowls and enjoyed fresh and THIS batch– with garlic and onions from the garden, tastes WAY better than even the great salsa we made last year! I can’t believe how good we’re getting at this salsa making. Meanwhile, my first ever batch of tomato sauce was extra spicy, because I chopped up 2 tiny red peppers (can’t remember which ones, I have so many varieties) and added them. So my sauce is good, but it packs a wee punch. Not over-whelming, luckily, but definitely gonna kick up the Italian recipes I use it on a good notch!

In the evening, we sat around talking and relaxing, snacking on chips and salsa, just enjoying the summer-like evening. I had a glass of wine and really unwound. I feel really good after getting all that work done, and I’m so happy people were so eager to volunteer to help! It was SO much easier and faster. I’m really loving what we have going here.