The Big Tomato Payoff

Heirloom Tomatoes-Bird Back 40

Break it Down! Stop! Tomato Time!

Is your garden like mine? Heirloom tomatoes coming out of your ears? It is that time of year for us heirloom aficionados. Long after the hybrids have played out and stopped producing, the heirlooms move in and take over -- delivering harvest after harvest after harvest.

And if the weather holds? Yet another harvest!

What does one do when nature delivers a boatload of heirloom tomato goodness? A couple like yours truly and the wife that is Venus drags out the canning equipment and starts preparing for some very big canning projects. We can't eat 50 tomatoes in one or two sittings. But we'll make darn sure that each one of them finds it's way into a canning jar of whole tomatoes, tomato sauces or salsa.

First Steps: Wash and Core Tomatoes

There's nothing quite like a warm bite of salsa on a Monday Night Football game played in a snowstorm. That's the payoff, my friends, the big tomato payoff.

This most recent project pays homage to a home-canning professional by the name of Sharon Howard, who plied her trade during decades of gardening in the Alberta, Canada area. I first became aware of Sharon many moons ago when I grabbed one of her recipes for canning dill pickles. She was kind enough to share many tomato sauce and stewed tomato canning recipes that were decades old, resulting in some of the most ridiculously delicious sauces we have ever created.

But on this particular day last August -- the job facing us was fairly simple. My back had healed up to the point where I could actually bend and pick a bounty of a harvest without a nerve or a disc flying off the handle and into the next backyard. The job on this day would be placing as many whole tomatoes into one-quart canning jars and processing the haul through a pressure canning process.

Skinned Tomatoes

The most tedious part of this process would be removing the skins from the actual tomatoes. That's job I leave up to the wife that is Venus. My job is to boil said tomatoes first, in a pot of water. Then place those tomatoes I've stuck in boiling water for one minute into an ice water bath.

With perfect red, round and smooth tomatoes -- those skins will slip off quite easily. But heirloom tomatoes aren't red. They aren't round either. And they are anything but smooth. Heirloom tomatoes are rather unwieldy, cat-faced beasts. It makes the job of peeling off the skins a little tougher, but it's still well worth the effort when those cold winter months roll into town.

Pack Each Jar Full!

As you might be able to guess, this process takes a little time with 50-100 freshly harvested tomatoes. But as we've come to learn in previous years, anything less than 20 one-quart jars of whole tomatoes is going to leave us short when we need them. And I cannot tell you how much I detest the assignment of driving to the store (in cold weather no less) to pick up a can or two of whole or sliced tomatoes.

And do you think our sauces are going to taste as good with something that came out of a common cannery? Perish the thought! Yep -- we're spoiled alright. Mighty spoiled. But it's also spoiled in a good way.

Summer Goodness in a Jar

After the skins are off -- the task gets fairly simple. Once those one-quart jars are washed and sterilized through the boiling water bath process, it's time to add a tablespoon or two of processed lemon juice to each jar, cram them with as many peeled tomatoes as possible, wipe the rims of each jar, seal and process through a 30-minute pressure canning process.

Then end result on this day? 18 quarts of whole tomatoes. Add those 18 quarts to five others that we had put through the canning process earlier this summer, and the Bird household is stocked with whole tomatoes for winter use.

Under Pressure

Ah -- but that's just part of the canning process. Because you can't make a tomato-good pizza sauce without adding a little finished tomato SAUCE to those whole tomatoes. Know what that means? It means another harvest is three weeks off.

You think sauce is important? Well, don't ask me! Rob Schneider of Saturday Night Live fame made sauce famous with his signature lines from skit involving a restaurant called "Hub's Gyros: "You like a de sauce, eh? De sauce is good, eh? I get you more sauce!" Three simple lines. Non-stop laughter.

Simple instructions for canning whole tomatoes can be found here and here.

Soup's On!

Fresh Garden Veg-All!

As our summer days begin that ever so slow slide into that cooler interim we call "fall," it's time to take stock of what's left in the summer garden, and what's done. Although some heirloom tomato patches are still churning out fruit, our heirloom plantings pretty much petered out a solid month ago. While we still enjoy the occasional tomato or two, the bushel harvests are a distant memory.

I'm sad to see those days end. I'm never ready for the end of summer gardening season. Although there are things to plant in fall and spring, nothing offers the diversity of produce that springs from a summer garden. What is a gardener to do then, when the sudden urge for an ear of heirloom corn or a single pole bean comes on strong in the dead of winter.

Carrots from the Bird Back 40

My friends, we are prepared!

One of our favorite evening meals, especially during those weeknights after a long day at work, is a simple soup that contains ground turkey, a bit of broth, can of tomatoes and a can of Veg-All. The wife that is Venus stumbled upon this recipe some years ago, and it's been a staple in the Bird Houze ever since. Add in some freshly baked crescent rolls and you've got yourself one quick and easy supper.

This meal is that much better when you can add a can of tomatoes or tomato sauce that came straight from the Bird Back 40 the previous summer. As I took stock of what was left in the summer garden some weeks ago, it suddenly struck me, why purchase the canned vegetable stock known as "Veg-All?" Why not make your own Veg-All at home?

Leaning Towers of Pole Beans

We already know that anything fresh from the backyard is far superior than anything that can be purchased in the local supermarket. So why stop at canning projects that involve tomatoes and cucumbers? Why not put that overproductive carrot patch that would make Bugs Bunny jealous to good use? Our pole bean planting efforts now strongly resemble the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And although this year's corn crop was nothing to write home about, there was still enough there to add to the mix.

Three garden vegetables = Homemade Veg-All.

Fresh Heirloom Garden Corn

One important thing to consider before we move even further into this project is this: This project involves the use of pressure canning equipment. Water bath canners simply do not provide the pressure needed to safely can non-acidic vegetables like this, unless additional acid in the form of vinegar or lemon juice is added. At that point, you wind up with pickled vegetables rather than the canned variety. Even with our pressure canning equipment, Venus and I added a tablespoon of lemon juice to each pint jar before canning, just to play it safe.

Chopped and Ready for Processing

I must say, this has been an excellent year for carrots of all shapes and sizes in the Bird Back 40. The same holds true with the pole bean crop that we planted in July after removing a less than stellar garlic crop. The planter beds that dot the Bird Back 40 don't stay empty for very long. Once one crop is removed, the tired soil is amended and new seeds are added for the next crop.

But, I digress.

Parboil and Can

This is a much simpler project than canning tomato sauce, whole tomatoes and salsa. Those canning efforts involve a number of different steps before the actual product is added to jars and placed inside canning equipment for processing. For a simple vegetable mix like this? It's pick, clean, chop, mix together, parboil and can. The only difference is processing time -- about 45 minutes at 15 lbs. pressure. Just the simple act of processing can take several hours, especially if you have more jars of product than canning space in the pressure canning equipment.

But the payoff is a sweet treat during those cold winter months. If popping open a jar of home-canned tomatoes or tomato-sauce brings that sweet smell of summer into the kitchen, I can only begin to imagine the smells and taste that our vegetable canning efforts will bring.

SIMPLE WINTER SOUP

1 lb. ground turkey

1 tablespoon oil

1 onion

4-5 cloves peeled garlic

1 14.5 ounce can beef broth (water and beef bullion works just as well)

1 14 ounce can whole or chopped tomatoes

1 can Veg-All

Fresh or dry herbs

Fresh Garden Veg-All

Use food processor to ground garlic into bits and cut onion into appropriate bite-sized pieces. If you don't have a food processor, use a blender, or put a butcher knife to good use and start chopping. Add onion, garlic and ground turkey to soup pot containing oil, and proceed to cook on medium high heat until meat is cooked and no longer pink.

Add beef broth, tomatoes, Veg-All and herbs of your choice (Venus uses a mix of basil, oregano, cilantro, marjoram, whatever she has handy) and bring to a boil. Simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from heat, or just turn the stove off and allow soup to cool slightly before serving. Pop some crescent rolls or any other role into the oven for ten minutes and serve with soup.

Enjoy!