Final Harvest and Canning
a comedy of errors
Hello friend! My name is Amy. I am so happy you have stopped by ✨ If you are new here, a warm welcome to you! This space is where I meander through midlife, connecting to my true self through the seasonal shifts and simpler living, and seeking my inner wise woman. If you are also on this path and looking for someone to walk gently beside you, I see you and am here. Let’s color outside the lines together.
Sunday was a beautiful brisk fall day here in the upper Midwest. The light is breathtaking this time of year, and I just want to bask in it every chance that I get. We’ve had a couple of light frosts last week, so I knew that I had to tackle our tomato arbor and harvest all of the green tomatoes then clean out all of the vegetation, for our next planting. We now garden in a few raised beds in cattle troughs and whiskey barrels set up below the kitchen window of our 130 year old farm house. It’s a far cry from the days of our massive garden but now meets our needs as a family of empty nesters with kids in and out on their own time, except our weekly Sunday family dinner.
The harvest was 30lbs of green tomatoes this year! It has been years since I canned my mother-in-law’s green tomato relish recipe and I was excited to jump in with both feet….then I couldn’t find the recipe!! I searched high and low, through recipes I posted on my previous blog, cookbooks, even my old Ball canning book, that I hoped I had slipped it in. Nothing! I was so disappointed, and began to look online for a replacement recipe. I then remembered that I had sent it to my Friend Colleen’s sister-in-law Sara several years ago so I reached out and within a minute, *Ping* the recipe was back in my possession via text! Sara saved the day!!
Yesterday afternoon I was up to my ears in grinding tomatoes, bell peppers and onions….yes onions! If you think chopping onions is bad, try grinding them for relish, I was sobbing, pressing down the grinder attachment on our trusty kitchen aid with as much force as possible to speed the process while turned the other way with my eyes tight shut and bleary with tears. I did have the forethought to do the onions last so I was throwing the chunks into the grinder quickly and once done I stirred them very quickly into the rest of the mixture to try to reduce fumes thereby allowing my tears to subside.
The final steps were easy, tossing in the rest of the ingredients and cooking it all until a rolling boil and slightly reduced. Then came the next challenge. We love our induction cooktop but I knew that I couldn’t use our light weight aluminum water bath canner, so I went to the basement to bring up ‘ big bertha’, our giant pressure canner. To start, when I got down to the basement, which in a 130 year old farmhouse is a stone foundation, wobbly floor over dirt and in the case of ours, a catch all. Even cleaned out it is a disaster and of course the 30 lb pressure canner was on a shelf that was more than a little difficult to get to. But, I did it!! I was huffing and puffing when I got back to the kitchen which was steamy with boiling relish and only just bearable post onion fumes. I filled it with water and set it to boil so that I could process my 12 beautiful pint jars of relish.
Guess what?! That dam*ed pressure canner was not steel, it was super thick aluminum and would not even think about heating on my induction cook top. So I washed out the stock pot that I’d made the relish in, poured the water in and then searched for some sort of grate to put in the bottom. Of course the grate from the pressure canner was way too big, I hauled myself back to the basement to try the rack from the water bath canner, it was even bigger than the grate. Finally I found, I don’t even know what it was, some sort of rack from something I don’t remember having, bent it and forced it in the pot. Unlike the three bears, it was not just right, but it would do!
Now, I’m hot, tired and frustrated, and guess what?! I can’t find my canning tongs; the ones that I had less than a month ago when I did peaches! So throwing up my arms, I took a rubber potholder and processed the cans 4 at a time for 15 minutes each set.
Thank you for listening to my rant, long story short, it turned out fantastically! I did pass on making dinner as I had planned to doing a sautéed onion dish….NOT! I am posting the recipe below so that I never lose it again. This recipe only utilized 1/3 of my tomato haul, so tonight I’m going to be canning Salsa Verde….wish me luck!
Until next time,
Bravo, Amy! I would have stopped at the onions. No, maybe at harvesting 30 pounds. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy every last jar!
I admire you canning your produce as it has always felt like such a complicated process having to deal with water baths, plus it’s not such a thing to do here and I only first encountered it when we lived in Boston. Plenty of jams, chutney and pickles that don’t need canning to keep me busy!