This was a lot of work - pizza sauce

Earlier in the season I secretly despaired about the Roma tomatoes. The first tomatoes on each plant developed blossom end rot. The cure is to add calcium to the soil, but honestly, I'd not had great success with that. This year, I ignored the recommended amounts and added a generous handful of garden lime pellets to each bucket and watered it in. This time, it worked. I've had a good harvest of Roma tomatoes. 

The plan was to can them as diced, or crushed, tomatoes to add to recipes. I did that. The plants are still producing and I decided to make a batch of pizza sauce according to the recipe in the Ball Book.  

The recipe calls for thirteen cups of tomato puree and states it will yield about seven pints. A pint is too much for a single pizza for two people and a dog, so I canned the sauce in half-pints. 

The project went well, but it was very labor intensive. I had to core and slice the tomatoes, then cook them down to a liquid state. Then I ran everything through a food mill to remove the skins and seeds. After that, the result needed to simmer until it thickened and that took hours. 

The actual processing required two canner runs. Water bath canning was called for, so no stacking in the canner. Each batch had to process for thirty-five minutes. I'm delighted with the end result. Every jar sealed so there was no pizza tonight, I'm sorry to say. 

It's a good feeling to have home-grown truly organic food on the pantry shelf. The tomato plants are still bearing so I need to go through the Ball Book and decide on what to make next. If I can't decide, I'll simply process plain sauce. It won't go to waste, that's for sure. 

I'm feeling really good about my little garden this year. Yes, it's a bit of work, but it's work that will benefit us for months to come. To our way of thinking, that's a good thing.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, home processed food, gardening, rural lifestyle, country living, tomatoes, pizza sauce, simple country pleasures, blossom end rot