First ever canning and I'm in love!!!

With a fridge full of tomatoes I had my first ever attempt at canning this bank holiday weekend. After  literally years of reading about canning and pinning about canning and internet window shopping about canning I have finally done it!!!

To say it is a proud moment is an understatement. I laughed a little when Kymber said I'd be thinking about canning green tomatoes, cuz guess what, the thought had crossed my mind. It has seemed as though the tomatoes have taken forever to ripen this year, it could be the fact that summers been a bit non-existent. But I swear, they were taunting me, knowing my desperation to can them.

So I picked tomatoes for the first attempt as they could be water bath canned with my stock pot and apart from having to buy mason jars it was a cheap new hobby. I was a bit sad that my bargain jar rack didn't fit the pot, but I took another readers suggestion and used the rings from the unused jars in the bottom of the pot.

I chose a recipe from the Ball website called Basil-garlic tomato sauce. Like most families we eat a lot of pasta as it's easy and filling and the kids love it. Full tummies means good sleep, sold! Here's the link if you fancy a look. The only thing I changed was I added a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar and it really helped the taste. Next year I'll plant some garlic and then it can be all home grown.

10lbs of tomatoes made 3 pints of sauce, which I figure is about 6 meals. My maslin pan was great for reducing the sauce, it's measure marks meant I could stop reducing the sauce when I knew there was just the right amount for three jars, so there were no half filled jars. 

I'm going to try a few half recipes to see what I like before I start making in bulk. This sauce was very good though so I will definitely make it again. For the time being I have added a pressure canner to my Amazon wish list and I'll look at it longingly every time I buy something else, a girl has to dream big.

On another topic, as the rain fell all night our garden looks like the Somme. Our digger friend put in all the services for the cabin in the trench and covered it over, what a massive job done, I am super grateful we didn't have to do it ourselves. It is worth every penny of someone else's time right now.

Before

After

So for now I just keep admiring my three jars of sauce and I've told James they're for special occasions. He seemed to think I meant the kids weddings?!