Pioneer Woman at Heart

  It's officially "fall" here now.  Woke up to 40°F and boy it is very chilly.  The leaves are turning even more, and more are falling.  The tomatoes are done for the garden season too. 5 pints of Lemony-Basil Tomato Soup was canned.  I normally get about 2-3 batches canned, but not this year.  I am thankful for what we did get.  The cold weather has started to diminish the amount of herbs we are getting from the herb garden now. There are other goals now that the tomatoes are all processed. We will need to pull everything left in the garden(s), and do other prep work to put them to "bed" for the season.  I still have apples to process, but they are in the fridge for now.  I need to get caught up with other work and I have a strainer full of garden bell peppers to dice and freeze. I totally forgot that I planted several rosemary plants inside the garden this year, so I will need to process those (have no plans to try for the umpteenth time to...

I woke up in time to see this beautiful sky.  I did however, sleep in, and did not get to see my husband before he went to work.  He is taking over a supervisor position for a few months.  Let's just say the coffee pot is pre-set at 4:30am now.  Unless I try and put up another table in the living room, I am plum out of room for ripe ones.  I'm trying my best to get things canned, but I can only do one sauce/tomato recipe in one day. We have surpassed 200 pounds of Amish paste this year.  There are more out there, and the plants are dying.  Sheesh, but so thankful for the stock up with all of them. The recipe I use for the Lemony -Tomato Basil soup is from this magazine.  Looks like a magazine, but thick like the ball regular canning book.  I think I bought it at TSC farm store.  I canned another batch of this soup. It is also the same magazine that has the BBQ sauce recipe that I can.  To me, it's the best one we've tried so far. I ...

My sauce maker is in full swing right now.  I restocked our tomato soup.  It's so good too.  The photo makes the jars look weird, but it's just that I took the photo when it was dark out.  The recipe is in the Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications - Canning, Preserving+Freezing and drying issue.

Ketchup requires 10 pounds of tomatoes - 3 batches made.  More to make later I hope. I've been successful at getting the tomatoes cut and cooked down before the sun rises, but not through the sauce maker.  Early is best when canning with sauce anything.  This was a double batch of tomato paste (20 pounds).  That is one of my smaller sauce pans - 8 inches tall, and 10 inches in diameter.  That is what it looks like before it becomes.....