Its Canning Time Again

Saturday is my day to go to my CSA and pick up my share. This week I was able to choose beets! I also procured broccoli, onions, cucumbers, 4 zucchini, 4 cantelopes, 3 watermelons, radiccio, 6 lettuce heads (2 were part of the share ,the other 4 I bought), a bag of tatsoi, 6 tomatoes, and 9 ears of corn. I also bought 12 pounds of collards and red leaf kale, plus 2 boxes of blueberries. We also got to pick 1/2 pound of purple and yellow beans plus 2 quarts of cherry tomatoes. I also picked some basil to make the Tomato Bisque

They keep the beet greens attached to the beets but if other people do not want the greens, they put them in the bucket for compost. This is like a gold mine to me. I go through the compost and get all the beet greens along with the broccoli greens. I use most of these greens to make our smoothies for the week. And since last week I had made two weeks worth of juice, I was able to steam and freeze the 12 lbs of kale and collards! Yeehaw!

Also they had a lot of "second" tomatoes or "sauce" tomatoes. They told me to take as much as I wanted. So I did, an entire flat!

With all of that produce, there was only one or two things to do: make soup and sauce. I made Dr. F's Anti Cancer Soup and Tomato Bisque from the recipe section with some variations. I broiled some red peppers and 1.5 lbs of tomatoes ( I used 3 lbs total in the bisque). After broiling, I removed the skins of the peppers and tomatoes and blended away! It came out really good.

With the rest of the tomaters, I made some sauce and canned it. I mostly followed the recipe in the Ball Blue Book of preserving. Except that I used the rest of my fresh basil (and parsley) blended in. I also did not have any more onions, so that was omitted also. I did add 1 T of lemon juice to each jar before steam pressurizing. The recipe did not call for it, but the booklet that came with my canner says one should add acid to tomato products to ensure that nothing grows in the jar. We will see how it goes. But now at least I have 6 jars of no salt added tomato sauce!