If you're planning to preserve tomatos now is the perfect time

Rick Lattin tells me that the Roma tomato season is about to peak so now is the perfect time to order a few lugs and spend some time preserving for those cold season meals. Contact them soon at 427-3750.

Mark and I spent some time in the kitchen last Friday improving our canning skills, listening to music, and doing what we love best...being together and working on a project.

Here's how our canning went:

We purchased 3 lugs (60 lbs) of Lattin's Roma tomatoes for $42, and two bottles of organic lemon juice for about $9. We used only a small portion of the second jar so I won't figure the full price of that bottle into the final cost.

This year we used the canning instructions from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving.

We also started brewing beer this year so we now have this very nifty, huge propane burner. We used it for water bathing, which allowed us to keep all the heat outdoors instead of in the kitchen. It was wonderful!



I really love working with my hands but my mind also needs something to do or I get twitchy. When Mark is with me in the kitchen we talk, dance and sing while peeling tomatoes, but when I'm by myself I listen to audio books. Last year the books were on CD....this year they on my iPod, downloaded from the library. If you have an iPod take a look at the Overdrive program. Apple just recently loosened up on the propriety rights and began allowing public libraries to offer downloadable audio books compatible with iPods...it's wonderful and it's free.

We weighed a sampling of filled jars and found that on average the full jars weighed about 2 lbs, 14 oz. The empty jars weigh about 15 oz so each jar contains about 31 oz (1lb, 15oz) of tomatoes.

Final result.......

18 quart-sized jars, 31 oz of tomatoes in each one, costing about $2.61 each.

This cost assumes you already have all the necessary equipment to water bath. Took us a couple of years to learn what we needed and get it into the kitchen. Here's a tip...buy the equipment when you see it 'cause it may not be there at the height of canning season when you need it. Some Raley's stores (call first) and Ace Hardware stores are good resources. If you happen to be in Truckee go to the Ace Hardware there. It's the best I've seen in the region.

Learning to preserve food is a subject that's catching on with the public so the expertise and equipment is in demand.

The Cooperative Extension reports they have been seriously busy answering preserving questions. They still don't have a Nevada Master Preserver program but perhaps if enough people ask for it they'll create one.
Woo hoo!