Canning Tomato Day!

Well, this has nothing to do with either knitting or mystery books, but it's a resurrection of an old favorite activity: canning. It's been almost 20 years since I've done this, but my daughter wanted to do it, so we did. Of course, we had to take a few pictures.

I always do tomatoes raw packed in a hot water bath. It's super simple.





First, start with ripe tomatoes. Wash and core them. Cut off any imperfections. To make the removal of the skin easy, blanche the tomatoes by dropping them in boiling water for 60 seconds and immediately drop into icy cold water for another 60 seconds. This makes the skin split and for most tomatoes the skin just peels right off. Sometimes there's a few "tough guys" and you have to put a little effort into it.

We compost the peels, so nothing goes to waste. Part of this years harvest will go towards making next years harvest wonderful.

We picked up some extra tomatoes from a local farm stand to insure that we'd have enough for 2 water baths full (14 jars). The owners gave me a super price of $1.00 / lb.

Because newer hybrid tomatoes may not have enough acidity, add 2 Tbsp lemon juice for each quart. You also add 1 tsp. salt. This is a good time to mention that other additives, such as basil and garlic, will affect the acidity level, so I never add anything else. If you want to, you'll need to can via the pressure cooked method.

Fill the jars to 1/2" from the top. You need to leave a little head room so that there's space for the tomatoes to expand as they heat up. This is key because if you leave too much space on the top, you won't be able to remove all the air in the jar. If you overfill the jars, then overflow of tomatoes and/or juice will work its way under the jar lid and prevent a seal from happening.

Get yourself one of these nifty canning funnels. It'll help keep things a little less messy. When the jars are filled, you need to wipe around the edge, inside and out, to assure that they jar edge is clean.





Use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to press down the tomatoes. It's important to get them compacted in the jar so that there's no air pockets. IMPORTANT: Do NOT use any METAL utensils at this point. It somehow affects the chemistry.

I don't add any water or tomato juice to my jars. I find that the liquid of the tomato is sufficient. However, if you're using all plum tomatoes, you might need to add some hot liquid. In that case, either add boiling water or heated tomato juice to bring the level inside the jar up to the right height.


What a difference it makes to have an extra pair of hands! Back in the day when I use to do this, I was going solo. Here's a photo of one my two helpers. Nicole did the lion's share of the peeling and coring, but she didn't want her picture posted. Nicole's friend, Ben popped over to help and he's always good for entertainment factors. I worked to get the first batch into the water bath, and Nicole and Ben are doing the second bath themselves. Passing tradition onto the next generation, I guess.


On the left is a photo of the jars before going into the bath. On the right, is post canning. The jars are spread out with a couple of inches inbetween each jar. You leave them untouched for 12-24 hours. At the end of this time, you'll check the lids to make sure that the seal occurred. When the lid makes a good seal, the center of the lid will decompress and you'll see a slight indent. Double check by pressing a finger into the center. It there's any movement, that means that the seal didn't take. In that case, you'll need to open the jar, check your levels, re-clean the edge (inside and out) and apply a NEW lid. You cannot reuse the round flat part of the lids. The screw-on part is reuseable, though.

You might notice on the "finished" tomatoes that there's a clear liquid at the bottom. That's perfectly alright. The more solid part rises to the top.

Once the cans are cooled and you've checked to make sure the seal is OK, then stash them away and enjoy throughout the winter season.

After-the-fact note: We got a great seal on 11 of the 12 cans we did today. One didn't take, so my son, Greg used it immediately with some leftover tomatoes to make a delicious pasta sauce. We had so much fun that I've ordered a bushel of tomatoes ($25.00 at the local farm stand) and we'll be canning more next week. On Labor Day, Nicole and I will be making dill pickles, something I've never done before. Update on that later.

Bramble Bag Gone Wrong

norah Flickr

Ok...I wanted to make the Bramble Bag by Donna Yacino. This picture is lovely and I left the Flickr picture owner's name there to give credit where credit is due. Anyway, this is a free pattern from Berroco. I had some various Lion Brand Cotton around and thought I'd use that for a bag. Now, let me say that I'm not really an "accessory" person. I usually have 1 purse and I use it to death and then hunt out a replacement (usually at Salvation Army because I hate the prices of bags I see in the store and I'm super picky about purses, so spending a little for a not-quite perfect bag is preferable to spending a lot for a not-quite-perfect bag.) Well, I started working on it one evening up in my room and made several inches progress. The next morning I showed Nicole and she didn't like it at all. I noticed that it wasn't coming out looking ANYTHING like the picture, but it did have an interesting texture so I decided to keep going with it.

I was about 1/2 way finished when I realized that I was knitting row 2 & 4 of a 4 row pattern completely WRONG! No wonder why mine didn't look like the Bramble! Well, it is a kinda cool texture and I had knit so much of it I decided to finish it up. Here's some pictures of what it's looking like so far.

I'm sure that I didn't invent the stitch, but I haven't searched through stitch books to figure out what this one might be called.


On the Knit side, you knit 3 and Pass the first stitch over the next two, all the way across the row. Now it's on the Purl side that I ran amock. I was suppose to pick up a stitch in the bar between the second and third stitch and purl it. However, I brought the yarn to the Back and slipped the right needle through the wrapped stitch and purled that.
It looks OK and it's going to be sturdy and -- HECK, I'm a woman who buys purses at Salvation Army! What difference will it make R E A L L Y ? ? ?

Well, the project picture for the Bramble Bag has amazing handles which sell for about $40 for the strap and $12 for the dowels with finials. Since this was a "test" bag and it's not AWESOME, I didn't want to spend that much.



Putting on the thinking cap and looking around JoAnn's I found some curtain tie-backs that would work . They're a bit short, so I'll have to make a loop to attach them to, but that won't be a problem. I really like shoulder bags, and being a big woman, I need them to be 30" to 36", depending on whether or not I'll be tossing it over a shoulder wearing a winter coat. Here's a picture of the tie-backs. They cost $3.00 each. Not bad!

I found this remnant fabric which is the perfect color of dark greenish-teal. Cost, $.97 -- another piece of good luck.

I'll make 3 or 4" loops and attach the tie-backs to them to extend the length. I'm considering making a covering for the brown cording so the entire handle will be the teal color. I haven't quite made up my mind yet, but I have plenty of fabric if I choose to do so.





This picture shows the fabric I found for the lining. It's going to rather fun and a little bit funky. All in all, I'm eager to finish the knit fabric now. I've got 7 more repeats to make a 30" piece. That should do it. Today Nicole and I went hunting in Lowe's for a dowel and end finial, but couldn't find an end piece that wasn't too huge. We did find a curtain rod that would have been perfect except it was gold-tone (and I'm not into gold or brown, for that matter.) I've been picturing a teal strap all along. We decided to check out Michael's Crafts and Nicole discovered THE perfect dowel caps. I couldn't make up my mind whether the small or medium size would be best, so I got both. Those and some Aqua acrylic paint came to a total cost of $9.00. (I've already cast on a wool version of the TRUE Bramble Bag, so I'll use one of the dowel sets on that.) So I spent around $11.00 instead of the $50 for the leather, but I think it will still look OK. I've been dreaming of a bag that I saw at a LYS and am designing my own version of it. On that bag I'm going to spring for the gorgeous leather straps. If I really love using this test Bramble-wanna-be bag, I'll make myself a super one with gorgeous yarn and one of the kids can get me the amazing leather handles for a birthday or Xmas gift.

It should be finished completely be next weekend. I'll post a finished picture then.

Other favorite things . . .

Flowers. I just love them. I don't know what it is about morning glories, but they elicit such joy. Like a kid at Christmas morning, I eagerly look forward to seeing how many blooms appear each day. I plant them every year and have since my first garden. This year the blossoms are abundant.

Since I haven't yet mastered blogging and adding pictures, let's see if I can place some of the other yard pictures throughout this entry. Of course, I will attempt to avoid the abundant weeds growing out there. (They just got away from us this summer.)

I tried out a new product (new to me) this year: A compost that has shellfish in it. It's made all our plants go wild! I'm totally in love with it and I recommend it highly to everyone who will listen.

My Blackeye Susans are amazing and have been blooming as beautiful as this since early July. They've never looked this good before. They've outgrown the corner of the raised bed and will have to be dug up and divided at the end of the season. So my gardner's mind is plotting other spots that I can move the new plants to.

It's one of the things I love about perennials, the economy of their division. When my own space gets too full of one variety, there's always other gardeners to share with.


Here's a photo of the "wealth corner" of the yard. For those who are familiar with Feng-shui, you'll know what that means.

When I first moved into this house 14 years ago this corner was a barren pool deck of concrete. One of the first projects I insisted upon was putting in a double tiered raised bed so we could have some greenery there. Over the years it's changed quite a bit, and coming up later this fall we'll be extending it 6-8 feet on both ends. Last year Nicole talked me into removing a bunch of perennials and growing tomatoes and peppers. I told her that if I saw a horned worm on the tomatoes I'm not going near them! She agreed to handle any pest problem that arose. Well, we've had no problem with those kinds of pests (thankfully -- I hate bugs), and quickly figured out that we need more space. Next year we're going to try adding cucumbers.

You may notice some lawn chairs up against the greenery in the left side of the garden. That's one of our creative solutions to tomato plants that have grown so large that they needed help being propped up. Those round cones were totally insufficient to hold the plants up and we didn't want the stems to break as they fell over with the weight of the tomatoes.

This is our favorite sitting place. It's a picture from earlier this summer before the Morning Glories started blooming. We all love our picnic table. It was an extravagant purchase made back when I had refinanced the house to have the backyard landscaped. We ended up moving it to the pool deck since we tore down an ugly shelter which offered the only shade down at the shallow end of the pool. The set is made of Jarah Wood, which comes from Australia. It's what's used to make pier pilings there and is impervious to wood rot. The benches are so comfortable that sitting here is even more comfortable than sitting at my dining table in the house. Countless hours of fun have been had sitting here, for me and the kids and lots of friends.

Here's a long shot of the raised bed taken from the steps of the pool. Hiding in the garden is my Buddah. Since I do Asian Bodywork (shiatsu) as one of my jobs, I love having Asian garden sculptures to gaze upon out my treatment room window. There's a few other lovely things around the yard, and part of me wishes I could see the entire vista of the yard and gardens from the window. However, unfortunately, only this section of the yard can be viewed from a window in the back of the house. Actually, there's only the sliding door in the treatment room that you can see into the back. One of the sad things about this house is that there isn't any windows facing the back yard. I've really missed being able to view the birds at the feeders throughout the year. That's something we only get to enjoy in the good weather when we're out in the yard.

This is a view of the other side of the yard, opposite the last picture. This shows one of my favorite sculptures, a gorgeous Japanese pagoda made from granite.

This corner of the yard is quite shady most of the day. I've got a variety of hosta planted there.

My neighbors have Trumpet vine which have run amuck and grow over and between my fence. We try to keep pulling them out because they take over so much that over the years they've killed off a variety of Astilbe that I had growing along the fence.

Speaking of neighbors, the ones behind me planted enormous Sunflowers this year. I've always wanted to plant Sunflowers but never wanted to sacrifice the space to grow them since my pure sunny spots are limited. This year I am graced with my neighbors Sunflowers which turn to face the sun and smile on our back yard. Thank you lovely neighbors!

They're so cheerful, they've GOT to make you smile! The birds love them and lately they've been attracting cardinals to our yard, and for that, I'm most appreciative.

A close up of one of the many planters around the yard.

Ok....that's all for now. Since I've been sitting here posting this, the weeds are growing and the plants are calling out for water.