Not much has been going on lately. I've just been busy everyday doing random things. Like picking tomatoes. I even tried canning them for the first time.
(Question: Why is it called "canning" when we use jars? Shouldn't it be called "jarring"?)
The first time canning went OK but I learned a few things. First: go ahead and really squish the tomatoes in the jar. They can handle it, and more air will be removed. Second: I should have hot-packed them. Raw-packing them allowed them to retain a lot of their air. (Do you see a theme here?) Third: I processed jars of different sizes and took out the pint jars at the allotted times while the quart jars were left in the hot water bath for a few more minutes. There's a reason you are supposed to hang the jar rack on the edge of the pot for 5 minutes. When you remove the jar directly from the water to the counter-top, the sudden pressure change causes the liquid to push out of the jars, leaving a large air space in the top of the jar when things cool down. This causes no problem as long as the lid seals properly but any tomatoes that are above the liquid level could change colors. However, this is not going to be a problem for me since I made the first two mistakes. There is plenty of extra room in the jars for the tomatoes to float in.
Next time I'll know to hot-pack them, pack them in tight, and don't remove them from the heat too quickly. Actually next time I'll "jar" them using a pressure canner. The processing time will be 10 minutes rather than 40 and I won't have to use lemon juice in the jars. Yesterday my brand new super-cool pressure canner arrived (we got it for "free" using credit card reward points) and now I'll just have to wait a few days for more tomatoes to ripen.
