I Hate Tomatoes
Well, we started our first raised bed vegetable garden this year and I couldn’t love it more. Watching seeds sprout in the dreary days of early spring, to now being able to wander outside barefoot and harvest the fruits of our labor feels like the most natural thing in the world. I have border line obsessive tendencies any time I grow things - roses, vegetables, shrubs, you name it, you can find me picking at it, watering it, & passionately defending it against the local deer population (see my reel for more on that). My beefsteak tomatoes were no different. I stood vigilant as they turned from green, to orange, to my countertop where they could safely ripen, away from my garden predators. The funny thing is, I hate tomatoes. I grew 7 tomato plants and I don’t plan on eating a single one. Sauce, however, is another story. Be it pomodoro, bolognese, meatballs with marinara, or just freshly baked bread paired with a nice, full-bodied cabernet (oh, how I miss cabernet), I am an equal opportunist when it comes to sauce. There isn’t a single drop of Italian blood that runs through these veins, but my husband assures me that his Nonni & I would have been thick as thieves in the kitchen. Now, how to preserve this liquid goodness was my challenge…
My curiosity for canning started when I stumbled upon a dooms day prepper account on instagram. I was terrified.. and FASCINATED. I quickly ran over to my pantry to discover that should the apocalypse rain down upon us, we’d have enough food to last a week…maybe. As a mom, this got my attention and got me in gear.
To my husband’s surprise, I jokingly(?) set up a “dooms day shelf” in our basement and have been slowly stocking pantry staples and canned goods - more to just have a reserve rather than survive a nuclear fallout. As I type this, I know I sound crazy, BUT, having extra staples on hand has brought me so much comfort and peace of mind, so there’s that. I’m also going to have a newborn in January and don’t plan on leaving the house for 3 months…so bring on the dooms day shelf! Learning to preserve foods has always been something I was interested in learning. Add that to the laundry list of things they don’t teach you in school…but THANK GOD for that Pythagorean theorem. I knew when I started this garden that I’d want to enjoy my summer bounty in the cold winter months, so I got some books from the library and got to work! PSA - don’t spend money on books. Your local library shares a network with all the libraries in the state and you can legit create an account and place a hold on just about any book you can find on Amazon. There’s no “library prime,” so it may take a few weeks, but getting that email that your book is ready for pick up brings me so much joy (says that 32-year old who goes to bed at 8:30). Anyways - turns out the whole water canning process is insanely easy and not at all scary at all - like most things in life.
Once I had harvested enough tomatoes & fresh herbs to make sauce, I got to work. I regret not weighing them or counting them, but it was roughly 20-30 ripe tomatoes. I tried two methods for making sauce - one was processing the tomatoes fresh, then reducing the sauce on the stove for a few hours. The other method - roasting the tomatoes for an hour at 425, then processing them and doing a quick finish on the stove. I found roasting the tomatoes was the most flavorful - rich, deep, simmered-all-day kinda flavor. Also, it was way easier. My basic sauce recipe goes something like this: one huge basket of fresh tomatoes, roasted then pureed, 1/4 cup fresh herbs and 4 cloves of garlic (sautéed in olive oil), 1 tbsp kosher salt, 1 tbsp sugar (I like it SWEET!), and 1 tsp black pepper. Once my sauce was done, I filled my mason jars and let them boil in a water bath cauldron canner for 35-minutes. BOOM - we had pints on the dooms day shelf! I should warn you - one pint mason jar will cost you roughly $250 (that gave my dad a good laugh). You see, when you add up the upfront investment of the raised garden bed, dirt, seeds, and canning supplies, my little hobby has cost us a pretty penny - initially. But I know in years to come, I think, I hope, this will become a cost save and a skill I can pass down and share with others! Not to mention, preserving fruits or vegetables at home is a local, fresh, organic, alternative to what you’d find in the grocery store. I love knowing exactly what’s in the food my family is eating.
I’ve been wanting to try this for years and kept waiting for someone, anyone to show me how. Shocking, I know, but there aren’t exactly a plethora of places offering at-home canning courses like you would think! But, 2022 seems to be the year of doubling down and teaching myself all the things, so I just dove in. Below are my 5 tips for teaching yourself a new skill. Regardless of what’s on your bucket list, you’ll find that these all apply!
5 Tips for Teaching Yourself a New Skill:
Do your research! And use multiple sources. My research process started where all great research begins - YouTube. I used YouTube to learn the basics and just educate myself on what exactly I needed education on. From there, I reserved tons of books from the library to peruse at my leisure. Did you know they did away with late fees?! Another reason to get yourself a library card! I took elements from each source and compiled notes on my phone of my biggest takeaways. Because where we would be without our iPhone notes?
Invest in good quality supplies. The retail world is at your finger tips! Read reviews and purchase your supplies well in advance of when you’re ready to start your endeavor so you have time to get familiar with your new products and how you’ll use them. There’s nothing worse than finally finding the motivation to start something and then quickly losing it when you find you don’t know how to assemble something or use the tools correctly.
Prepare for what can go wrong and have a recovery plan. In the canning world, that’s botulism…no big deal. I spent a lot of time reading about how to troubleshoot and identify common problems. This is especially important when you are your own teacher. Spend just as much time researching what could go right AND what could go wrong. This is the hardest part of being your own teacher!
Trust your gut and go for it! So much of life is just rolling with the punches and not being afraid to dive in. When I wanted to start a garden, I was so intimidated by how much I didn’t know, that I almost didn’t do it. One day, I was listening to a gardening podcast (I know), and someone said “Just throw some seeds in the ground and see what happens.” While research and preparedness are very important, it’s just as important to let go of perfection and know that every expert was once a beginner - and you’ll never become an expert if you don’t start.
Celebrate your accomplishments! My pint jars’ final destination might be in our dreary basement, but for now, I have them on display in my kitchen - like the trophies they have come to represent for me. One affirmation we hear on my son’s favorite TV show is “I can do hard things.” We teach our children that, but when is the last time we gave ourselves that gentle reminder? Anything worth doing will be hard, but when we overcome it, we arrive on the other side more confident and more capable than we were before.
