The Saga Of The Green Tomato Sauce

9 pints and 7 quarts of green tomato sauce

   I finally got my camera and computer to cooperate and let me download pictures. I'll start with the green tomato sauce. As you know, I had 25 pounds of green tomatoes and I decided to make sauce out of them. I also had some zucchini and patty pan squash, so I added them to the sauce, as well.
   I had planned to put the sauce in the freezer, but we have a small freezer, and all the freezer bags wouldn't fit, so I canned it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew you shouldn't water bath can tomato sauce that had zucchini in it, it should be pressure canned. We have a totally electric house so I have no pressure canner /cooker.
   I spent all day on the sauce, which looked like green enchilada sauce, and canned it well into the night. The next day, looking at my sauce, I got to worrying about the canning method. I researched it, and researched it some more, only to find I was right. Even though I cooked it and boiled the pints for 45 minutes and the quarts for 50 minutes, it was the wrong method. So, instead of risking botulism, I added it all to the compost pile. It also didn't smell very good. Oddly enough, the deer didn't touch it.
   I am new at this canning business, so it's all a learning experience anyway. Too bad I wasted all day doing it, but better safe than sorry. The tomatoes were so hard and green, they wouldn't have ripened up before spoiling, anyway, so I figure, except for the time, it was no great loss.

   Next year, I'm wondering if I can use propane and the base of Tim's yet unused turkey fryer, get a pressure canner and try that? No, I wouldn't be using the fryer part, just the base that you set it on. Then again, I did find an electric pressure cooker/canner. I think I will probably opt for the electric method.

   Here is a bathtub full of 138 pounds of potatoes. I rinsed all the dirt off of them outside in the wheel barrow, and the only place I could think of to put them in once they were in the house, was the bathtub in the extra bathroom.

   They are out of the bathtub now, and I have dehydrated and frozen a lot of them. Now, I have them in a milk crate in the pantry and the small ones are in 2 boxes in the dining room and a stainless steel bowl on the kitchen counter.

   They are very good potatoes, but the small ones are not going to last very long, so those are the ones that are getting used first. 

   Tomorrow, or this weekend, I will tell you what I have been doing with the dehydrated potatoes and how I am freezing them.