Tomato Time Out

It was all tomatoes all the time yesterday. After writing yesterday's post, it was time to start in on the red buggers. It was around 10:00 a.m., and the work continued until 4:30 sorting, washing, scoring, blanching, coring, skinning, chopping, mixing, stirring, filling, and boiling. That list was posted to Facebook yesterday, only to realize that I'd left out "skinning". This morning, I can add "labeling" to the list. As you can see, it's a multi-step process when you take this

To this.

Yesterday's yield was 7 quarts of pasta sauce and 5 pints of salsa. There's also a half-quart of sauce sitting in the refrigerator waiting for its mission in life to be fulfilled. 

And now, there is this much left to do. That will be today's activity. The ones on the left are destined to become tomato jam. All the rest will be cooked into pasta sauce.

First, however, I spent a little time stitching Block 18 of the Bee-utiful quilt.

Block 20, "Bee Friendly" was released last week. Blocks 19 and 20 are going into the regular embroidery rotation now with the rest of the embroidery projects.

And now that I know there are no blocks named "Bee Loving", I've decided to use that name for my version of the quilt. From here on, that's what it will be called.

The only other canning adventure on my list of things to do is to can some plum chutney. I'll wait until Tuesday for that. Tomorrow I'm heading off to the Swan Island Dahlia Festival. It's one of the best photo-ops of the year. We've been only once way back in 2011, and so I'm glad to have another opportunity. There's not much to tell you beyond tomatoes today, and so I'll leave you with some of the best photos from that last trip.

 

Expect more than you can stand soon. For now...tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes.