Canning Tomatoes for Fall Harvest

Ahh, Fall. The air gets cooler, the trees change color and its time to get down to the business of putting up some preserves for the long winter.

Every Autumn, I pull out the pressure canner that my Mother handed down to me. She used it to can vegetables from my Dad's garden when I was kid. I drive to McQuesten Farms, my favorite pick-your-own farm to collect about two bushels of tomatoes. Most are the Big Boy variety which I preserve, but I also pick about 1/2 bussel of the smaller, meatier Romas to make sun-dried tomatoes.

I try to put up enough tomatoes to last me through the chilly months of winter. I thoroughly enjoy the rich, ripe taste of home canned tomatoes. They taste so much better than the store bought version whose consistency and flavor is more reminiscent of cardboard than the authentic red fruit.

Since not many people preserve their own food anymore, I often get questions about how to do it. One year, a former herb student of mine even helped me with the whole process just so she could learn how to do it for her own family.

So, to answer the question asked so often by so many, I finally decided to take photos during my weekend of canning and have made them available as a slide show on Flickr if you're interested. If you want to see the description of each step, click on the 'show info' button in the upper right hand corner when you are on the Flickr site. I hope you enjoy the process.

Click here to see the slide show