Would You Like to Hear a Poem?

So this one time... actually a lot of times... my family bottled tomatoes. For as long as I can remember we've done tomatoes. Even when my parents first got married they did tomatoes. We LIVE off of them. I don't know how I would cook anything if we didn't have delicious tomatoes year-round.
Now, I know what you are thinking. Ew. Tomatoes are nasty.
And you, my friend, are probably right. Because you've never had a home-grown tomato ;)
*props to Challenger School for that excellent song*
Those things they have at the grocery store that they call tomatoes are indeed not tomatoes. They grow them under a light and pick them when they are still green so that they have time to "ripen" while being shipped. And ultimately have no flavor.

Ya know, these...

Anyway- since real live tomatoes are AWESOME we bottle them every summer. We have our very own supplier called Mr. Rushton who lets us come pick as many as we need from his massive tomato patch. We've been going there forever and I love it! Even though you get SO dirty it's fun to see how fast you can pick and how big you can find them :)

This year we only had to get 6 bushels (about 270 pounds) so Kaylee, my dad, and I set out to pick. We got done in 45 minutes which I'm pretty sure is a record. Go us.

After you pick, you wait until Saturday morning to can them. Except last year we started on Friday night because we had so many to do. Thankfully this year it wasn't so bad and we got them all done in one day!

Saturday morning you wake up at about 7:30 and put on your Old Navy flag t-shirt from a few years earlier since you pretty much can't wear it in public anymore. Then you find your happy place and set out for the garage. We usually start with whole tomatoes because they take the longest to cook and it's nice to get that out of the way. Plus they are way easier than juice. So we scald, peel, stuff, salt, seal, and cook those bad boys until they are ready to be put into storage. Since my family is pro at tomato canning, we all have our specific jobs that we just do and everything runs nicely. Sometimes we have disasters like exploding steamers or salt-less bottles but for the most part things work out.

Kyle and Natalie came over to help this year so that was fun!

They told us about their honeymoon to Alaska and it was really good to see them :)

When whole tomatoes are finished you begin the juice process. That involves washing, cutting, cooking, juicing, scraping, salting, pouring, sealing, and cooking again. It's hot and messy and hard. This is the part where you get tomato stuff ALL OVER YOU. By then everyone is starving and we eat tuna fish sammiches and discuss what cooker is with what timer and my dad is always worried about how things are going to work out. :P

Thank goodness for the KitchenAid juicer attachment :)

The chit-chat in the garage is always nice. We listen to music, sing, recite Challenger poetry (hence the title of this post. Inside joke from last year), and laugh about how silly we must look. And then we embrace it by taking pictures like this. :)

When the last bottles have been filled and are waiting in line for the cooker, we start clean up. I hate clean up. ( hahaha this year I had to go to work at 4 and we got done around 2 so I accidentally slept through clean up. I went inside for just a minute and ended up waking up 30 minutes before I had to go to work. So I hurried and showered and spent the rest of the day making smoothies for people. It was a long freakin day but it was a lot of fun!) You pretty much just bring everything inside and wash it all before it becomes impossible to remove the tomato remnants. And when that is over, you stand and admire all of the beautiful bottles. 

Some of the juice :)

I love canning tomatoes. It's so much work but so rewarding. I hope that one day I can do this with my own family :)