This is basically an update to my post about what we planted this year in our gardens... we never did get the garden in town planted, so... no tomatoes to can this year, or peppers, which means no salsa! Or tomatoes for homemade tomato soup! Or tomato sauce or any other tomato goodies!
On top of not getting the garden in town planted, the garden that we planted at The Land didn't do so great either. The deer ate most of it (thinking of building a fence next year!) All I can say is UFFDA! A bad year for canning; we have onions, pumpkins, sunflowers, and green beans (which I decided to freeze because I have enough canned beans from last year left.) I guess we do have cucumbers for pickles though, so I have at least one thing to can! I've also been looking in the grocery stores for crates of pears (my son LOVES canned pears!) but haven't seen any yet. One thing I have in the works to can is Wild grape jelly, the grapes are about ripe! What else could I can??
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I still had some tomatoes in the freezer from last year's garden so I decided to can tomato/veggie soup today to use them up! I used a recipe that I came up with a few years ago just for this purpose, to use up some of my frozen vegetables to make room for this years crop! I usually freeze quite a few green beans and carrots every year. And I freeze a lot of tomatoes as well if I don't have time to can them in the fall, and this recipe has been a great way to use some of these vegetables. Here is my basic recipe. I try to stick to this if I have all the ingredients on hand.
I did make a change to the recipe today and didn't add the great northern beans. The main reason I omitted these was to make it a lower carb soup, but also I didn't have any! (If you are wondering about the carbs, I calculate about 26 carbs per jar of soup. So 13 per 1 cup serving, but this soup is so good I always eat the whole jar myself!) The last time I made this soup I didn't put them in either, and it was delicious! Just not as filling as with the beans. So... here's the process! First I removed the skins from the tomatoes. The best way to do this is to put the frozen tomatoes in a pan of hot water for about 10-20 seconds and you will be able to slip the skins right off! (Save the skins for making homemade tomato sauce!) If you are using fresh tomatoes you will need to use boiling water to get the skins off, but I've found that for frozen tomatoes hot water works great! I always core my tomatoes before I freeze them, makes this part of the process go so much easier. After the skins are off, I lay them out on a baking tray or on plates to let them start to thaw. |
About me:I'm a married mom with 3 kids, ages 16,14 & 12. Things I like: canning, fishing, trying to get organized, antiques, gardening, saving money, camping, looking for new recipes, and funny stuff! Archives
August 2018
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