Canning Tomatoes: at home, without a pressure canner.

As a child, I would help my dad in the kitchen and pretend to be on a cooking show.  I would even have him set up the camcorder to record me on my show.  My favorite recipe was homemade cookies, but no matter what was on the menu, I wanted to teach the world how to make it.  As I write these recipe blogs, I can't help but be reminded of that little 8-year-old redhead who always wanted to teach people out there to cook, even if no one was listening.

Some things never change.  I could have never imagined such a thing as the Internet back then, much less a blog, but 20 years later, I'm still doing my own little cooking show.

Today's lesson focuses on canning tomatoes at home.  My dad knows someone with a green thumb and he brought me about sixty tomatoes from that person's garden.  I didn't count, but it was enough to make 18 pints of tomato sauce. Since I could never use that many tomatoes before they spoiled, and since I refuse to let anything go to waste, I canned them and stuck them in my deep freezer for future use in sauces, stews, and other tomato-based recipes.

Enough with the digression.  Here's the how-to:

1.  Gather materials.  I didn't want to make a huge investment by buying a pressure canner and I made do with things that I have around my house in place of standard canning fare.  For this, I used: pint jars, a funnel, a large bowl, a pot for sterilizing, and a pot for cooking.

2.  Wash the tomatoes and then cut a shallow X on the bottom.

3.  Place the tomatoes a few at a time into boiling water and cook them just until the skins begin to split.  Remove them with a slotted spoon and place them into a bowl of ice water.

4.  Peel the tomatoes, core them, and dice them.  When canning a small amount of tomatoes, I just cut them up with a knife.  For a large amount, I use my food processor in the interest of time.

5.  Cook the tomatoes.  I season with some salt, sugar, and garlic.  My husband and kids have a limited appreciation for more varied ingredients.  I made sure mine got to a boil and then let it cook down a little before I canned it.



6.  When the sauce has finished cooking, place the pan in ice water to cool it down before canning.

7. Sterilize the jars in boiling water. Ideally, you pull them out and can them immediately.  Use tongs or a specially designed can holder for this.



(If my sauce hasn't cooled before I'm done sterilyzing, I will stick them in the boiling water again for a moment before I fill them, just to be sure.)

8.  Fill the jars using a funnel.  Leave 1/2" of headspace.

9.  Clean any tomato sauce from the rim of the jars and seal them.

10.  At this point, someone with a pressure canner would use that to seal the jars.  I simply leave them overnight upside down and in the morning, they are sealed.  Press the lid to make sure.  If it pops back up, the jars are not sealed.  They can then be stored in your cabinet, fridge, or freezer.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is CONSTITUTIONAL.

Nearly 24 hours ago, the Supreme Court upheld PPACA (or pejoratively, "Obamacare") in a 5-4 decision.  While I'm glad the Court swung this way, I was stunned and so was most of the country, I'm sure.  Initially, news networks reported that it was struck down because they were so eager to be the first to break the story that they failed to read Roberts' entire opinion.  To their defense, it was probably safe to assume that if Roberts was issuing the majority opinion, it must have been against ACA because he is a conservative Bush appointee.  After some initial confusion, we realized that the law was upheld.  It still made for some good photoshopping, like this "Dewey Defeats Truman" inspired photo below.

Anyway, throughout the day, constitutional scholars came out of the woodworks on Facebook.  It was actually kind of sad to see how little people actually understand about this law and just how government operates in general.  First of all, the enactment of this law went precisely how our Constitution intends.  A majority of members of Congress voted for it, the president signed it, and when it came before the highest tribunal, the justices interpreted it.  Majority won.

The suprise in its passage was not that in reality it is unconstitutional.  It was that everyone expected it to be a purely political vote by the Court, which by and large, it was.  Four liberal justices - Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer, and Ginsburg - all voted to uphold the law on the commerce clause.  Four conservative justices - Alito, Kennedy, Thomas, and Scalia - all voted to overturn the law in its entirety (Thomas wrote the dissenting opinion).  The tie-breaking vote came from Chief Justice John Roberts, a Bush-appointee.  He even wrote the opinion!

In his opinion, he said the individual mandate was constitutional under Congress's taxing and spending power, not the commerce clause.  Republicans were (and still are) outraged that the bill was passed and has now been deemed constitutional thanks, in large part, to a conservative justice.  The strange part is, they don't like the part that requires people to purchase health insurance coverage (when I'm sure most people that I know who are complaining probably purchase it through their employer).  Republicans whine all the time about making people take care of themselves, don't depend on the government, be responsible, and when the government takes a step to do that, they get mad!  This mandate makes people responsible for their own health insurance but Republicans claim it infringes on their freedom by subjecting them to a penalty (tax...nuance) if they don't purchase it.  They also like most parts of the bill except for the mandate, which is the part that pays for the popular provisions! 

Hypocrisy abounds.



**I started this blog the day after PPACA was upheld.  I finished it three days later.  Hence the timing is off...