Pioneer Woman at Heart

One Flourishing, Frugal and Fun Family!

One family learning to live off the land, cut back on expenses, and to live a simpler and a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Adopted Motto

"Eat it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do,
Or go without."
~A Pioneer Sampler, by Barbara Greenwood~

Friday, September 8, 2023

Out with a Bang! ~ Paste Tomatoes are Done!


Lemony-Basil Tomato soup (BHG recipe).  One last canning day with paste tomatoes. Next year we plan to grow several types of paste tomatoes.  I have put a towel over my sauce and put sticky notes until the 24 hour period has passed, so I can label before I forget what is what ha ha!


The big pots are being put away, and tables taken down and folded up.  The tomato splatters all washed away, stove top scrubbed down.  It's a hoorah moment today.

It's a good feeling when the tomato season (other than our slicers left to enjoy) has come to an end.  I have been canning daily here for almost 2 weeks, and it will be a fine joy to have a day off today.

As most of you know, when canning season is in full swing, other work suffers inside and outside the homestead.  It will be nice to get some things in order today.  I hope to get my emails read finally too.

Canning season is not over yet.  At least I hope not, as we need hot pepper relish in the pantry.  I most likely will not can hot pepper jelly this year.  I guess we'll see, as some of the kids like it.  It just depends on supply and time.

I took a look-see at the other squash, and I do not see one acorn squash on the acorn squash plants.  Strange, unless the bees were so busy on the zucchini this year, they didn't make it over there??  I will take a closer look after the garden dries out a bit.

The rain that came through here, and even last night, has brought us a welcomed cooler weather.

One last note:  I asked my husband to pick me up a few pounds of ground pork from a local butcher.  He didn't.  He went to the store and got 2 pounds of grocery store "country" sausage.  Read the labels, and this is why I make my own breakfast sausage.  It contained "corn syrup" as the 3rd ingredient.  No wonder some people are diabetic and have other health issues.  Just an FYI.  You'd never think, corn syrup would be in sausage.  They often use a sweetener in store breakfast sausages and roll sausages.



4 comments:

Katie C. said...

I didn’t know that about the sausage. Interesting.

You are lucky that you get enough tomatoes coming in at the same time to can. I had to buy some seconds at the farmers market to get my quarts of crushed tomatoes and two batches of Ball’s Zesty salsa. The ones we are growing have been going in the freezer to make sauce at a later cooler date.

This weekend, I’m planning on canning jalapeƱo jelly for my sister and salsa verde for us. The tomatillos are ready and we always have jalapeƱos!

I have canned two new things so far this year using tested safe recipes of course: French onion soup (a double batch) which was a TON of stirring and split pea soup (a triple! batch). I haven’t tried them yet. I just wanted to be able to open a jar and eat without the long cook time. I no longer like commercially canned soup.

-Katie C.

Pioneer Woman at Heart said...

Katie C. we always have jalapenos here too. I normally make hot pepper jelly, but I will not be this year. Not all of our tomatoes made it to the kitchen this year. Some of them started to get black spots all over them, which I have never seen before. The weather is all over the charts in our area.

Debi said...

I have been neck deep in tomatoes too... salsa, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, tomato jam. And there are still tomatoes ripening on the vines... it's crazy! I did not know that about sausage... seems they put some sort of sweetener in everything these days!

Pioneer Woman at Heart said...

Debi, it has been a crazy tomato year, and we too have more out there, but I have not had time to yank the plants, ha ha!