'Tis the Season to be Canning

Two weeks ago a gentleman from hubby's work asked if we'd like some tomatoes.  Earlier in the season he had brought a bunch of zucchinis to give away.  Apparently he is involved in a community garden and was "done" with the tomatoes.  They were also not the variety he thought he had planted and so he didn't want them.  I told hubby I'd take whatever he wanted to get rid of.  I'd figure something out based on whatever he wanted to give.

Be very careful of what you say.

The next day hubby brought home boxes, yes, boxes of tomatoes.
This is what I still had left after canning 35 pints of salsa on that first Friday and Saturday.

It didn't feel like I even made a dent in the boxes, but that's O.K.
I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth--or in this case boxes of free tomatoes.
So I got to work and did more canning, almost every day last week.

Vegetable soup (left) and Spicy Tomato Salsa (right)

Spaghetti Sauce

Tomato-Basil Jam

Mandarin Sauce

I added quarts of Vegetable Soup, pints of Spicy Tomato Salsa, quarts of Spaghetti Sauce, Sweet & Sour sauce, Tomato-Basil jam..  After all that I STILL had tomatoes. So I did more Vegetable Soup, more salsas and more Spaghetti Sauce.  The boxes are finally empty, after days of working on them.  I'm tired, but it also feels so good to see all that food on my storage shelves.  I am actually to the point where I don't have much extra shelving space.  That hasn't ever happened to us before.  I also had to go out and buy more jars. Also, can't remember the last time I had to do that.

Now on to something else...anything else.  
I really don't want to see any more tomatoes for quite some time.
That was a LOT.

Free Boxes of Tomatoes Yield:

• 24 pints of Jalapeno Salsa, Ball Blue Book (BBB) pg. 81
• 22 pints of Carrot Pepper Salsa, Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (BCBHP) pg. 211
• 8 quarts of Vegetable Soup,  BBB pg. 65 or BCBHP pg. 402
• 10 pints of Spicy Tomato Salsa, BBB pg. 83 or BCBHP pg.205
• 21 quarts of Spaghetti Sauce 
• 7 half-pints of Tomato-Basil Jam, Can It!, pg. 61
• 16 pints of Mandarin Sauce (Oriental sweet & sour sauce)
• 7 quarts of Garden Vegetable Soup from BHG You Can Can, pg. 200. 
• 1 tomato cucumber salad for church potluck dinner.
• Gave away about a 1/2 of the small lid box worth of tomatoes to my neighbor Jack.

Total Jars:  115 jars of tomato goodness.

Then on top of those I also canned 28 quarts of soup starter (not involving tomatoes).
And 11 pints of Tomatillo Green Salsa with some free green tomatoes from my friend Jenny's garden.  Her pregnant body doesn't want anything to do with tomatoes right now.

That bumps it up to 154 Jars.

Yeah, no wonder I'm tired.
Redbox is looking good today.