The antidote, for me, to deal with disappointments and heartaches, is to keep myself engaged with my life. So that is what is going on at our house, Attila and I have turned towards our much loved home and garden, and each other.
This began last week, after the devastating appointment at the hospital, indefinitely postponing my cataract surgery at the last minute.
What did we do? Well, the very next day we went to the grocery store and bought a bushel of Roma tomatoes.
Then we started canning.
Our first canning project, spanning three days, was Salsa, 53 500-ml jars of salsa.
There were quite a few tomatoes left, so it was decided to use them for Chili Sauce. The celery was harvested specifically to add to the Chili Sauce. Two batches of Chili Sauce yielded 13 500-ml jars.
There were still some Roma tomatoes left, so they were blanched, peeled and chopped, cooked as plain tomato sauce, and canned. There were 5 500-ml jars of tomato sauce.
Today, the project has been to harvest basil from the garden to make pesto. Pesto cannot be canned, so it is frozen. The day’s labours yielded 16 muffin cups of pesto. We place the pesto in paper muffin cups in a muffin pan, in which they are frozen. Then the “pesto pucks” are removed from the muffin pan, bagged and returned to the freezer.
The freezer is full. We need more room in the freezer. What to do.
We make vegetable broth from scraps and freeze it. It takes up a lot of room in the freezer. So out of the freezer it all came this evening. It was cooked again, to be pressure canned. This will free up space in the freezer and provide us with shelf stable broth for soups this winter.
The first 7 litres of broth are in the pressure canner, heating up before being timed. There are probably 3 more litres to be canned, which will be a second canning session. It will be a late night!
We also went grocery shopping today. We bought another bushel of Roma tomatoes, they were on sale. The intention is to can jars of plain tomato sauce. It will be a big job, the tomatoes will be briefly put in the steam juicer to soften them. Once softened they will be put through the tomato mill to remove the skins and seeds, then cooked and canned.
This will take us well into next week.
Our three annual marathon canning projects are usually tomato products, cucumber pickles, and apple products. We aren’t canning many pickles this year, our cucumber crop is sparse, and the pickling cucumbers are very expensive. We counted our jars of pickled items in the pantry, and figure we can get by on what we have until next summer. So after this new bushel of tomatoes is processed, there will be only one marathon canning project left for the season, apples.
Of course, there will be frequent small batch canning going on from now until the end of October, as produce comes in from our garden.
So Attila and I are happily tired and focused on our little life once more.
Worldly
Weather
21°C
Date: 7:00 PM EDT Thursday 20 August 2026
Condition: Mainly Sunny
Pressure: 101.8 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 21.1°C
Dew point: 13.5°C
Humidity: 62%
Wind: SSW 7 km/h
Humidex: 24
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.”
Ursula K. LeGuin
1929 – 2018
I bet all those veggies are tasty! Fascinating quote! Julia and I have been enjoying many of LeGuin’s books this year. Amazing writer who creates worlds that feel so real.
Joan, the vegetables are delicious! Our canning focuses on what comes out of the garden, and a few marathon canning sessions inspired by in season local produce, usually tomatoes, cucumbers, and apples. The small batches are usually condiment type things like the chili sauce, and the salsa, so that we have condiments without preservatives that are low on salt and sugar. The condiments certainly spice up plain old beans, legumes, rice, and pasta!
I love Ursula LeGuin’s books, I’ve read most of them over the years, buying paperbacks at used book stores. My favourite is Always Coming Home, home has always been a central theme of interest for me, in its various manifestations.
Because we often have leftovers from things like chili, soup, stir fries, etc, and use them for lunches or additional dinners, I recently looked at a new storage item I learned about: Souper Cubes. They’re stackable silicone tray storage containers for small amounts of ingredients or foods. I think they come in 1/2 cup, 1 cup, and 2 cup sizes. Silicone being so flexible, they have metal rims on the upper portion of the containers, making them stackable in the freezer.
The containers have consistent 4.8 star ratings, but I haven’t talked myself into getting them yet.
Teri, That is a great idea, to save small amounts/servings of leftovers for lunches and quick meals.
I am vaguely aware of the silicone cubes, but haven’t seriously looked at them. I would be most interested in the larger ones at this point, because I have stainless steel ½ cup measures, and I have paper muffin cup liners that are approximately ½ cup.
I have silicone muffin cup liners that are in constant use for baking my muffins. I like them, they are a bit finicky to clean but well worth the effort for me.
Whoa! In the last 18 hours we’ve had 4.5 inches of rain or about 115mm!!
Wow! That is a crazy amount of rain! Hope all your water related systems are OK!
Yes, we’re doing well, thanks. Fortunately, we’re near the top of a small hill, and that seems to have made the difference. Our sump pump hasn’t even been working hard.
Glad to hear your home is well situated and that you are unaffected!