Canning Tomatoes

So you planted a vegetable garden this year. It included roma tomatoes. you watered and you weeded, you nurtured your plants. You removed all of the suckers and made sure your plants weren’t invaded with insects and disease.

Your hard work has resulted in red, ripe tomatoes. More fresh tomatoes than your family can possibly eat before the fruit spoils.

Now what?

Maggie and I went to our shelf of recipe books and pulled out my mother’s recipe book of handwritten recipes she used for years.

In there she had the recipe for (Chili Sauce) it is probably more accurately a sweet chutney. But Mom always called it Chili Sauce. Anway it is a favorite of both Maggie and I and some of our family.

So we started in the morning and began to cut up all of the ingredients, celery, onion, peach, pear, and of course tomatoes.

Into a large pot went everything plus vinegar, sugar and pickling spices (which Maggie had put into a cloth bag and sewed it up so as not to spill out into the pot). Two and a half hours of stirring so things didn’t stick and burn to the bottom of the pot it was ready to be put into sterilized jars. once it sat for 12 - 24 our Chili Sauce was ready to eat.

This year we were able can 12 pints and 12 half pint jars.