Fall Canning

After some (crazed) success with summer jam and fruit canning, I decided to try at it again.

I had been hoping to can my own tomatoes, but the weather had other plans and so we got barely enough to chop over a few salads. I also grew up with home-canned pears and they were a great comfort when I was away at college.

In anticipation of some weekend canning, I made sure to buy my pears and tomatoes mid-week so they could ripen. By Friday the pears had my kitchen smelling soooooo good.

I followed the canning directions from the great resource PickYourOwn.org. I followed these pear directions and these tomato directions.

The flats were both about 20 pounds (then I bought about 5 pounds more of tomatoes, ya know, because I was worried it wouldn’t be enough….).

I used about 15 pounds of the pears and made 9 quart jars with a bit to spare for snacking :)

I also used about 20 pounds of the tomatoes (then ran out of jars!), making 12 pints of plain tomatoes.

And 12 jelly jars of Italian tomatoes (mixing in a few tablespoons of minced garlic and a few teaspoons of Italian herbs with each bowlful batch).

And I still have a ton pears and tomatoes left over. Hmmmm… looking into some pear butter and tomato basil sauce recipes for next weekend.