Getting Ready for Company

It's been awhile since I have blogged about food, hasn't it? The situation for Wisconsin educators is pretty grim. Teachers are retiring, which would ordinarily be good for someone like me who wants a permanent position, but school boards need to cut (LOTS OF) spending, so they won't be hiring new teachers to replace those who leave. Class sizes are almost definitely going to go up. While the school board in the district where I am subbing (but am not working under a contract or protected by a union) decided to extend the teachers' contracts for two years before our governor got rid of collective bargaining for teachers, the school board in the district where my husband is employed (with a contract) refused to extend their contracts, so he (and all of the other teachers in the district) now have their jobs at the whim of the school board, with no real union protection at all. We're looking at some big changes for next year.

One positive piece of political news is that the Wisconsin legislature may be thinking about making sales of raw milk legal (again). I hope that any such bill survives a veto this time.

In spite of not blogging much lately, I have been cooking up some yummy things in the kitchen. In an effort to streamline my life so that I can focus on teaching during the week, I've been making a huge batch of something on Saturday or Sunday, and living off of leftovers for the rest of the week.

Here are some pictures of the food we've been enjoying:

Spaghetti with grass-finished beef, homemade spaghetti sauce, and zucchini from last year's garden:

The pot roast (which came from Viroqua, not Argyle as I previously stated).


A casserole made with zucchini, onions, mushrooms, pasta, grass-finished ground beef, 3/4 of a jar of homemade tomato sauce, and a full quart of homemade spaghetti sauce, topped with local farmer's cheese. (It is not hard to get local cheese in WI, fortunately!) It was a little bit watery - I a going to keep that in mind for canning next year and really cook down the tomatoes before canning them. (I plan to can at least five batches of plain tomatoes plus two batches of the spaghetti sauce from Animal Vegetable Miracle.)
(Ideally, I would have sauteed the onions in a separate pan to make sure that they got fully softened. I didn't want to make extra dirty dishes, but at the same time, I wanted to really dry the zucchini out, because it tends to be pretty soggy after several months in the freezer. My solution was to brown the zucchini first, then add the onions later so that the liquid from the onions wouldn't keep the zucchini from getting a little bit crisp. I don't know if this worked or not since it all cooked down together in the casserole!)

I made creamy tomato soup from the remainder of the tomato puree. It was delicious.

I have also been experimenting with making bread from scratch.

Delicious. And pretty too, if I do say so myself.
While the bread dough was rising, I was simmering a gallon of chicken stock on the stove.
I was running low from the last batch, but I had a chicken carcass in the freezer from a few weeks earlier, and it seemed like a good day to cook AND bake. I thought about roasting my turkey giblets and neck from Thanksgiving and adding them to the stock, but decided they will make their own stock when I run out of the turkey stock that I made from the turkey carcass after Thanksgiving.

I never posted about it, but I made a batch of crackers from scratch before the Superbowl. They were okay although in spite of baking them twice they never got quite crispy enough. I think that is because I did not roll the dough out thinly enough. Here's what was left after my dad and I took some to the Garden Expo in February:

As I posted previously, I am no longer eating meat from restaurants (unless I know where the meat came from and approve of the way it was raised) or buying it from the grocery store anymore. So yesterday I headed out to the farmers' market to pick up some meat to get me through the next few days with company.

My sister and my nieces are coming to town later this week. They eat "normal" things like Shredded Wheat, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and hotdogs.

I bought the cereal and the blue boxes of mac and cheese. But I just couldn't bring myself to buy hotdogs at the store. So yesterday at the farmers' market I picked up a package of brats (no nitrates)

and a package of hotdogs (with nitrates, but still a better choice than Oscar Meyer because the bison (shhhh) that the hotdogs came from led happy, pastured lives).

I also got a package of nitrite-free bacon for breakfast,
and my mom bought two chickens for next Sunday's big meal. (Not pictured. Yet.)

I'll be serving spaghetti with grass-fed ground beef and homemade spaghetti sauce (my last jars!) for dinner on Thursday night, and the two chickens with mashed potatoes and (frozen) garden peas and CSA corn on Sunday. I'm sure Adele will need to lick some jam off of a piece of homemade bread. And I'm planning to fold some frozen farm stand blueberries into the Rich Cream Scone recipe I haven't made in too long.

Back at the garden, my dad said he'd look into getting our huckleberry seeds and onion seeds started this week! I ordered about $75 worth of seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange, and have been drooling over them for a few weeks now.

Today I'm working on a pork roast that I will serve with wild rice and creamed asparagus (frozen last May). If I remember, I'll take pictures and post them later.

Changes

Just when I had finally gotten settled into a routine working as a substitute teacher some days and as a law clerk the rest of the week, things had to go and change. On Friday morning, nine minutes before I had to be at work at the law firm, I got a call from the school district where I had interviewed several weeks earlier. The interview was so long ago that I had recently said to my husband, "obviously I didn't get that job." The assistant principal who called me started the conversation by thanking me profusely for the thank-you card I sent to her after the interview. (For the record, I also sent a thank-you card after my previous interview with this school district, and it didn't seem to help, since I wasn't offered that job.) I listened politely, planning my response to her inevitable rejection speech. She thanked me for a while, then told me the teacher who needs the long-term sub had had her baby, and then eventually got around to telling me that she was offering me the job. She wanted me to come in that day. I was sort of stunned.

Her desire to have me get in the classroom on Friday was slightly awkward, since the law firm was expecting me in five minutes. Eventually she indicated that it would be okay if I came in on Monday (tomorrow) instead. So I told her I'd be happy to take the job, and made arrangements to talk to the personnel department later. I went to the law firm, and awkwardly told my boss that this was apparently going to be my last day. (How convenient that I had arranged to bring in the leftover spice cake from Thursday's book club - what had been just a "Friday treat" could now be called a "going-away treat.") He was very gracious, and congratulated me on getting the job. (Basically my boss at the law firm was an all-around good guy who displays the complete opposite traits from all of the other lawyers I have ever worked for. Your standard, run-of-the-mill lawyer would probably say this guy gives lawyers a bad name 'cause he's not a complete and total jerk.)

On a typical day at the law firm, I would arrive to find my desk full of files covered in post-it notes reading, "See me on filing Complaint in X case" or "Legal Research on Economic Loss Doctrine." I would have a brief meeting in which he would explain what he needed, and I would get to work. On Friday, he started out in this fashion, but began setting files to the side in cases he knew I wouldn't get to in my last 8 hours with the firm. As he was starting to tell me about a task I could complete, my phone rang.

It was the personnel department calling to tell me to bring official transcripts, my social security card, and my drivers' license on Monday after I go to the Occupational Health Services for my drug screen, my TB test, and my physical.

For the record, I don't typically answer my cell phone while working, but I figured I should pick up on Friday in case it was the school district calling back about Monday. So when another unknown number called me a few hours later, I figured it was the school district calling again. I was partly right. It was a school district - a different district with a long-term sub position calling to schedule an interview. They want to interview me on Monday the 13th. I told the lady who called that I am planning to take a different position but said I'd be happy to interview for this position as well. She was not deterred so I went ahead and took the first interview slot she had.

The job I have been offered is an hour and a half from my house, during good weather and not at rush hour. I will be waking up at 4:45 in order to leave my house by 5:45 so I can get to school by 7:15-7:30. Just this week I though to myself how thankful I was that my job was within walking distance from my house, and that I did not have to wake up before 6 a.m. to be at work on time. Ha. The interview that I will have on the 13th (if I don't cancel it) is for a half-time position that is 20 minutes from my house, and I believe this position will last the rest of the school year, whereas the position I've been offered is only for 3 months.

Furthermore, there is an English teacher in town who is expecting to go on maternity leave sometime between now and April, and she has recommended me to the principal as her long-term sub. I've been trying to get a one-day subbing job for her for the last month (she's posted three but someone else was always quicker to schedule the job), and finally got one - for a couple of weeks from now, which I will likely have to cancel. In a perfect world, taking this current job will not mean giving up the opportunity to sub for her. In a less-than ideal world, I may have some hard decisions to make in the next few weeks. And that is something I have never been particularly good at.

To top this all off, it snowed on Friday night, for really the first time this season - just in time to remind me how hazardous it may be to drive those 85 miles to and from a limited term job every day. I've been a little bit stressed out, trying to figure out how I'm going to feed my family real, local, non-processed food while I'm doing all of this driving. I've really enjoyed being able to take nice homemade meals to work. But when am I going to have time to make these meals now that I'll be spending three hours a day in the car? I'm trying to remember what/when I cooked while I was student teaching, but I'm kind of drawing a blank.

I went out to check the freezer a few minutes ago. I have four six-cup containers of vegetable beef soup, two four-cup containers of Kale soup, two four-cup containers of early vegetable soup (turnips, zucchini, and I'm not sure what else), several cups of chicken stock, and two f0ur-cup containers of beef stock in the freezer.
Plus, I finally got around to making turkey stock from my Thanksgiving turkey today. (The carcass had been hanging out in my freezer since my dad carved it. I don't have pictures, but I did require my husband's help to get the whole carcass into my stock pot.) It is still simmering on the stove, but I think it will make a couple quarts worth of stock. I also have many quarts of tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce both in the freezer and in my cupboards, along with half a dozen bags of sliced zucchini, at least a dozen bags of corn, and an assortment of other frozen vegetables.
We are not going to run out of food, but we might get a little bit sick of spaghetti with zucchini and tomato sauce.

The main problem with doing any more (real, local) food shopping in the next three months is that the farmers' market that is open in the winter is an hour away. It is still possible to go, since it is on Saturday mornings, but I know that the absolute last thing I'm going to want to do on a Saturday morning is get up early and drive an hour so I can go shopping.

Clearly, I have mapped out all of the negative elements of this job opportunity. What I need to focus on, instead, is how lucky I am to have been given this opportunity! In the past few months I have received several great employment opportunities. I am grateful for all of them. While there are a few drawbacks to this job, and while I might be inclined to stick with my still-new routine, which has become comfortable over the past few weeks, I recognize that this is an incredible opportunity for me. I was so disappointed not to have gotten a teaching job this summer, when most of the people I went to school with did find jobs. I was told by a veteran English teacher here in town that I needed to add some long-term subbing assignments to my resume so that school districts would know I had experience writing units and doing long-range planning. Now I have the opportunity to do just that.

So tomorrow I go in for the health screenings, and by Friday I should be set up in the classroom.
If it doesn't work out, the attorney said I'm welcome to come back to the law firm any time.

Worms

It has been a few days since I have written a blog, but rest assured I have not been slacking off in the kitchen.

On Sunday I picked up two dozen additional ears of corn from our CSA; I spent Monday morning shucking corn, blanching it, cooling it, cutting it, and bagging it. I netted seven one-pound bags of corn, and one half-pound bag. I am embarrassed to say I still have four ears of corn hanging out in my fridge from Sunday evening. I can't remember why I didn't cook it for dinner Monday night as planned; Tuesday and Wednesday nights I was not home for dinner, so the corn sat in the fridge. I grew up in a family that took corn - and the freshness thereof - very seriously. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't ever remember corn hanging out in my mom's kitchen for more than a day. My wayward corn is headed for the soup pot later today.

Corn isn't the only thing my family took seriously growing up, though. I mentioned Worms a few posts ago. I had a half a quart jar of tomato puree that did not go in the water bath last Thursday when I canned tomatoes, and wanted to use it up. So I used that jar, and a full quart, to make my first batch of Worms. I've been eating worms and hearing about worms my entire life. My mom's paternal grandmother is the first to have made the dish. When my grandpa was in kindergarten, it was customary for students to go home at noon to eat dinner. Upon his return to school one day after eating, my grandpa's teacher asked him what he'd eaten for lunch. "Worms," was his reply. The teacher said, "Lee Dunn, don't lie to me. What did you have for lunch?" My grandfather was probably a little bit baffled, and replied, honestly, "Worms." He was promptly sent home for the rest of the day. I wonder what my great-grandmother thought. (And whether she shared her recipe with the teacher.)

Worms must have originally been a leftover dish. Growing up, my mom used the odds and ends of whatever noodles she had on hand. While I had several full boxes of noodles in my kitchen on Sunday, I opted to use a blend. I strayed from the family recipe by using whole wheat noodles instead of enriched white noodles.

So, without further ado, I give you: WORMS.
Ingredients:

• Pasta (I used 1/4 box of thin spaghetti, and 1/3 box of elbow macaroni. Use what you have. Unless you have no pasta in your house at all, do not go to the store for this!)

• Ham (use what you have or what you can buy. We often had worms growing up around Easter when there was leftover ham in the fridge. I considered buying sandwich slices, because I've never bought any other kind of ham, but ended up with a 3/4 lb hunk of smoked ham that was very yummy. My grocery store did not have any organic ham, so this poor pig was full of antibiotics, genetically modified corn, imitation smoke flavor, and nitrites. But never having had nitrite free (or antibiotic free) ham, it tasted like ham to me.)
• Tomatoes - I used six cups. See below for discussion on the "correct" amount. My mom uses the tomato sauce I made at her house last Monday. I used the tomato puree I made on Thursday. It doesn't really matter, although chunks of tomato are a good thing. Ideally, my mom and I would get together and use some of each of our sauces. But right now the chunky sauce is in her basement and the puree is in my kitchen cupboard, and it's an hour's drive from my kitchen to her basement.

• Colby cheese. I suppose you could use some other kind of cheese, but we've always used Colby. I had muenster and farmer's cheese in my fridge but made a point of buying local (but not organic) Colby since I had to buy the ham anyway. No sense in messing with a good thing.
• Salt and pepper to taste. Pepper is an essential ingredient in worms. Salt is less important, because the ham and cheese have plenty of salt in them. But you really do need the pepper.
• Butter. Apparently my great-grandmother put a whole stick of butter in the middle of the dish. My mom dots the top with butter. I didn't add any and my worms were not as crispy on the top, but, frankly, until I called my mom to get the "recipe," I had no idea that there was butter in the dish, and I decided to skip it because I did not want to open a new stick of butter. I was having a lazy moment, what can I say? (I didn't actually need the recipe for worms - just the baking temperature and time)
  
• Buttered toast. I have to be honest here. You could probably use whole wheat toast, and I wouldn't blame you a bit, but I think the dish needs white toast to have the right consistency.

• Cook your noodles. I don't believe in al dente noodles. I like my noodles soft.
• Preheat oven to 350.
• Slice the ham and cheese.

• Spray a casserole dish. (I chose to slather soft butter in my casserole dish instead.)
• Layer the noodles, tomato sauce, ham, and cheese (and butter if you desire) in the casserole dish.

(I don't know why it didn't occur to me to cut the ham into smaller pieces.)

• Top each layer with pepper, and salt if desired.

I fit three layers in my casserole dish. I'd give you its measurements, but the dish is still in my fridge with the rest of the worms (today's lunch). I skipped the ham on my top layer - it was noodles, sauce, pepper, and cheese. The cheese/pepper should be on top.

• Place pats of butter on top, if desired.
• Place casserole dish on top of a cookie sheet, or use aluminum foil in your oven to catch spills.
• Bake, covered, for 30 minutes.
• Remove cover and bake 30-45 more minutes, until cheese on top is melted, bubbly, and maybe turning brown and crispy. (I forgot to take a picture, sorry!)
  
• Let sit for a few minutes before eating.
• Serve on plates, with a piece of buttered toast. Use the toast to sop up the juice. If you like juicy worms.
  

My mom introduced this dish to my dad's family. In spite of its name, it was a great hit with my paternal grandfather. I remember the last time he came over for Worms before he passed away. Never one to shy away from saying what he was thinking, my grandpa declared, "I think worms used to be a lot juicier." He was disappointed (and my mom's feelings were probably little bit hurt!), but still ate a big helping. My mom has always struggled to make sure that her Worms are juicy enough for my dad's side of the family. (This is why we immediately thought of Worms when our first attempt at canning tomatoes last week ended up so watery. We cooked the rest of the tomatoes down more, and decided to label the first jar "For Worms.")

So when I asked my husband how he liked his Worms (I think his only previous experience with the dish was that meal with my grandpa) he commented that they were good, but a little too juicy for his taste.

Having never heard such a critique of worms before, my mom was flabbergasted, and had to put my dad on the phone so he could hear the story too. The morals of the story are:
in spite of having lived in Kentucky for three years, I certainly did not marry a relative; and
when your teacher asks you what you had for lunch, think carefully about how you phrase your response.

Ruff Day

This is Oliver at the end of his very long day. I took the picture about five minutes ago and he hasn't moved yet. He may be out for the night. He really did have a rough day, though.

We got up this morning and went for a walk, to enjoy the cool weather. As you may know, Oliver is not the best walker in the world. He loves to get his leash on, but once we're outside he really doesn't know what to do with his fluffy little self. He is scared of walking. But he still gives it a try whenever I get the leash out. And, of course, he expects treats when he gets home from this scary adventure. (Today his "treat" was his heartworm pill.)

After his walk, I made an egg for breakfast. He saw the neighbor hanging laundry outside and started barking at her. We've had Oliver in this house with the same neighbor for a year and a half. She and Oliver have never had a problem, although Oliver always barks his head off when he sees her. When I am over at her house for a visit, Oliver barks the whole time I'm gone - and the river seems to amplify the noise. Today, while my hands were full of eggs, I told Oliver to "hush" when he barked. (As I always do. It never works. We need to go to obedience training.) Today, Judy was having a rough morning of her own, and she yelled at him to be quiet! I washed the egg off of my hands and carried Oliver into the kitchen by me. He gets pretty distracted by good smells in the kitchen. And the eggs were just the start of things today.

After my breakfast, I headed out in the back yard with Oliver and 30 ears of corn. While I shucked the corn, Judy came over to apologize for yelling at Oliver. She'd hung a new blouse out on her clothes line and one of the trees in the yard dropped goop all over it and may have ruined the shirt - that she was planning to wear to a luncheon at the high school today. (I told her she is free to yell at Oliver whenever he bothers her; she must have felt so bad about the whole deal that she apologized to Michael when she saw him at the luncheon - even though he didn't even know what had happened!)

Oliver hung out for most of the corn shucking, then wanted to come back in the house. Soon I joined him with the last 8 ears of corn. I boiled water and set up an ice water bath in my cooler. I blanched the corn, cooled it, and cut it off the cobs. Oliver waited at my feet, hoping for a "jackpot." He got a few. I froze 10 bags (3/4 lb. each) of corn. In the past, I have made the bags one pound each, but they seem a little too full. Besides, this way the corn will last longer. Of all of the corn that I have frozen this summer, this was by far the best tasting. I reserved another two dozen ears (which meant 30 yesterday) to pick up on Sunday at our CSA.
The tomatoes in the background are extras from our CSA. I thought about throwing them in with the rest of the canning today, but ended up keeping them out - I was already feeling a little bad because I forgot to save out a few ears of corn for our dinner tonight!

The corn was finished around 12:30, and I thought about eating lunch, but did the dishes instead, because I'd made plans to pick up 30 pounds of Roma tomatoes at the farmers' market at 2:00. I did some other cleaning in the kitchen, then headed to the grocery store to buy more jars and lemon juice. I looked at the jars for about 7 minutes, trying to decide whether to make between 6 and 8 quarts, or 12-14 pints. I didn't want to buy two cases of pint size jars, so I finally decided on the quarts. I'm quite certain that Oliver barked the entire time I was at the grocery store.

I picked up my tomatoes at the farmers market on my way home from the grocery store, and started canning at about 2:08. I washed the tomatoes, and Oliver waited expectantly at my feet for a tomato to fall.

The big box of tomatoes, partially emptied
On the left are tomatoes ready to be blanched. In the middle is the box. In the sink are (obviously) tomatoes being washed. This was a LOT of small tomatoes!
I think I could have filled my sink three times with all of the tomatoes in that box.

I blanched the tomatoes. Oliver waited expectantly at my feet for a tomato to fall.
(I blanched four trays full of tomatoes - but I had to bring out non-snowman trays in order to pull that off.)

I skinned and cored the tomatoes. Oliver waited expectantly at my feet for a tomato to fall.
Two tomatoes did fall while I was doing this, but Oliver didn't get either one.

In addition to making sure that no fallen tomatoes went uneaten, Oliver was also very busy barking at our landlord, who was using his Bobcat in the back yard, trying to figure out the grade of the terrace, and why the grass seeds aren't growing. Our landlord brought his dog, who whined the whole afternoon. Oliver heard the whining and barked. I told him to be quiet. He barked. The other dog whined. Oliver barked. The other dog whined. I wanted to pull my hair out. I called Michael to see when he'd be home from work. His phone was off. I locked Oliver in the bedroom. He barked, and also peed on the carpet.

It wasn't my favorite afternoon.

But Michael came home, and after he decompressed from back-to-school meetings he helped me with the tomatoes, which made the afternoon go much faster. (Also, our landlord left and took the dog with him, so Oliver didn't have anything to bark at. He just waited for tomatoes to fall.)

The tomatoes I bought were glorious - I only had to throw out two from the entire box. But while the Romas I got from my CSA were bright red and meaty, with thick red pulp around the seeds, these Romas were pale and watery. The puree they made coming out of the chinois was pretty thin - and the seeds slipped through the holes in the sieve part. (Not all of the seeds, just a few.)


I followed the Ball Blue Book recipe for tomato sauce in part, because I wasn't sure how long to cook the puree before putting it in the water bath. That recipe said to cook the tomato pulp down until it was half the original volume.

I couldn't wait that long. I didn't get my tomatoes until 2:00, remember? And I did the blanching and skinning mostly on my own, which takes a lot longer than doing it with another set of hands. Plus these Romas were very little, and I had to put a lot more effort into coring them than I would have with larger canning tomatoes. So I was still putting them through the chinois at 7:15 when our pizza was delivered. (Yes, it was ironic that we got pizza tonight while I was making tomato puree that might become pizza sauce sometime this winter. But Michael suggested pizza from a locally owned place, and I'm always up for food that someone else cooks.) So I boiled them down in three separate pots (because I didn't have a 3-gallon pot) until all of the tomato pulp fit into my 8 quart pot.
On the left is some of the juice that drained off of the tomatoes while they were waiting to be smashed in the chinois. On the right is the first large pot of puree.

And then I continued to boil it down while the water in the canner was bringing itself up to a simmer, and then a boil.
All of the puree in my eight-quart stock pot.

My sauce is pretty thin, but I think it will taste good. (I know it tastes good because I tried some, actually.) Five of the six jars that went into the water bath sealed so far (I took them out of the water bath 35 minutes ago), and the half quart that didn't go into the canner sealed too, but we'll eat that this week.
The leftover jar.

Resting in the water bath after 40 minutes boiling away.
I put vinegar in my water to keep the lime away, but apparently didn't use enough. However, this time the residue was only on the outside of the jars, not the inside. (I know because I looked, and also because I went ahead and put vinegar in the water while the jars were being sterilized today.)

From my human perspective, it was a good day. Oliver did his best to be in the way, but only got one drop of tomato on his head for all of his trouble. (Well, that plus the four tablespoons of corn that went flying when I lost my grip on the ear I was holding this morning.)
(My last jar just popped. So I can go to bed now, and my grandma can get back to whatever she was doing with her angel friends.)

Canning On Location

After spending over a week in Indiana with my sister's family, my mom returned home yesterday afternoon. Today, she worked as the overseer in the kitchen, while my dad and I canned a batch of tomatoes. (My mom showed me how she prepares the tomatoes a few weeks ago, but she learned to can from her mom, without a water bath or pressure canner, and I'm just too timid to go there. Although we almost did today, as you'll see . . .)

I planned to visit the garden today, since I had not been there for a while. Turns out, not too much is happening in the garden right now. There may be some pictures on a different camera, I'm not sure. I have about 8 blazing orange pumpkins, there are lots of green butternut squash, and my carrot tops have definitely filled out a lot since the last time I checked on them. Here's one that I picked, just to see how they're doing. There must have been a rock or clump of clay in its way (but it still tasted delicious):
I also dug around by the potato plants today. They are definitely growing! And the onions curing in the garage have thin papery skins, and seem to be ready to put into storage. But our fall crop of peas completely failed to materialize. I'm not sure what's up with that, but it makes me pretty sad.

Before he found out I was planning a trip to the garden today, my dad wanted to bring a big bag of tomatoes up to my house to can. Instead, I brought the canning supplies to him. A mistake I don't intend to duplicate tonight. Um . . . I mean next time. (Princess Bride reference, not a reference to more canning in the very near future.) The tomatoes were gorgeous, and while most were picked yesterday, some came off the vine mere seconds before being washed and dropped into boiling water for a little bit of blanching. I think we had good teamwork skills. But even as I walked into the house forty-five minute earlier, I foresaw a potential problem with our home canning operation.

I realized that I had lugged my 21 quart water bath all the way to Madison, intending to use it on my parents' enamel stove. The pot expressly states in the (basically otherwise unhelpful) instruction booklet that it is not for use on flat top stoves. Oops.

We did it anyway, since the tomatoes were there, and it seemed silly to caravan back to my place. (Okay, we didn't even consider doing that.) The tomatoes were sliced and simmering happily on the stove in the 3 gallon pot while we tried and tried to get the water bath to simmer, thereby sterilizing our jars.
(My dad thought this warning might be in place to prevent the owners of enamel stoves from suing the company after the water bath scratches their stove surface. I thought it had more to do with the uneven bottom of the pot.)

If anyone out there who reads this cans, please advise. How am I supposed to: 1. bring a water bath to boiling; 2. cook 3 gallons of tomatoes; and 3. sterilize jars in a third very large pot of water all on a four-burner stove? Some of those burners are very small, you know. And the dimensions of all of the non-commercial stoves I have ever used make it basically impossible to have three such pots on a stove at once. Yet all of these things need to be going at exactly the same time. My instructions state that I should pull one jar out of its simmering pot, fill it with hot material, put a lid on it (also pulled from a simmering pot) and then place it immediately on a rack in the water bath.

Rather than buying additional stoves for my kitchen and my mom's kitchen, we avoid this dilemma by using the water bath both to sterilize the jars and to do the processing. So my jars spend a few minutes on the counter after being filled, waiting to be re-submerged in now boiling (not simmering) water.

This entire situation was more complicated today because it probably took the water bath over an hour to get to simmering. During that time I decided twice to make the tomatoes my mom's way, heating the jars in the oven, and not using a water bath at all. But then the water was 165 degrees (we were going for 180) and it seemed silly to have wasted all of that energy on the hot water.) So we poured boiling water that my mom had heated in the teakettle and I had heated in the microwave into the water bath to bring the temperature up.

Eventually the water did boil, and I filled the first jar (an activity for which I was almost entirely unprepared, having misplaced my washcloth for wiping off the threads on the outside of the jar, forgotten to bring my lid-lifting magnet into the room, and failed to plan for the fact that there was room for serious drippage onto the floor between the simmering pot of tomatoes and my jar on the counter). I noticed that the tomato juice was very very thin and watery. Right. Because we'd kept the tomatoes simmering on low the whole time we were trying to get the water bath to simmer. We never took the lid off to let the tomatoes cook down, either. Oops. So we closed up that first jar and set it aside, and decided my dad could run out to the grocery store for more lemon juice (we weren't sure we had enough) while a little water cooked off of the tomatoes. We let the water bath bubble away happily, filled with six more quart jars. (I did not weigh the tomatoes before we started, so we weren't sure how many jars we'd need.)

I should mention at this point that the rack for my canner, which was in the water bath with the jars, keeping them off of the bottom of the pot, is already rusty and smells like old metal. I have used the thing twice, and I purchased it new a couple of weeks ago.

Eventually, my dad returned from the store and we pronounced the tomatoes thick enough to be finished. (Actually, we called them "good for more than just Worms," but Worms is a dish my mom's dad got kicked out of kindergarten for eating, and thus, is the story for a different blog post later.) As my dad pulled the jars out of the simmering water, and drained them, I began to notice that the white residue on the outside of the jars (from hard water) was also Inside the jars. My dad was convinced that this would not hurt anyone. (He doesn't cook a lot, but he did make pickled beets and canned tomatoes last summer, most if not all of which have now been consumed. And, like my grandma and my mom, he hasn't ever killed anyone with his cooking yet.) (I don't actually know anyone who has killed someone with their cooking, just so you know.) The residue creeped me out but we kept going.

Apparently my parents' water was unusually hard today. While I do not have a water softener, and there was a little bit of residue on my jars when my dad came up and we canned tomato sauce a week ago, it was nothing like what we saw today - and my parents have a relatively new water softener. And some of the residue had a faint brownish tinge, which I suspect came from the rustiness of the rack in the water bath.
See that residue on the jars? Eww.
But we did have good teamwork. My dad was in charge of getting the jars out of the canner, handing me lids, and, eventually, helping me get the last of the tomatoes out of the bottom of the pot. I filled jars with lemon juice and tomato sauce, and my mom captured it on film.
We added vinegar to the pot when we put the jars in to boil (five quarts), which I had read would help with hard water buildup. But I wasn't sure if I ought to have vinegar in the water while the jars were being sterilized. As I previously posted, I'm very worried about introducing foreign elements to the recipes I use, because I am afraid of botulism and other deadly diseases.

All six quart jars sealed (the first one I made sealed itself on the counter, after my mom and I had kind of given up on it -
and we felt a little bit of my grandmother's old wonder and awe at the sound of a metal lid sucking down over a glass jar filled with homemade goodness when it did finally pop) so we'll probably wait a while before digging in, and finding out whether we poisoned ourselves with rusty canning rack residue. (Things to note about the above picture: this jar spent significantly less time in the water bath, which may be why it is not covered with yucky white lime buildup. Also, my mom lacks a snowman plate, so she uses this yellow one for canning purposes. In the background are two jars of the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle tomato sauce we canned at my house on Friday the 13th.)

Next time I can tomatoes (or jelly, if I can get enough fall berries), I will do the work at my house, for easier heating capabilities and apparently softer water. My mom and I are unable to coordinate our schedules through at least the end of this week, but we'll see what happens next week. We may try to can some tomato puree, since I'm now a master chinois user. (Except I studied that Wikipedia article a little more carefully and discovered that Wikipedia actually refers to the device I have as a China Cap. A Chinoise is more like a conical sieve/strainer.)

Here is the recipe for the sauce we made today:
Ingredients:
One large tote bag full of tomatoes from the garden.
Dash of salt
Dash of pepper
Lemon Juice

• Blanch the tomatoes in boiling water until the skins crack.
• Core tomatoes and remove skins; cut tomatoes into large chunks.
• Simmer tomato chunks on the stove.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.
• They are ready to be put into jars and processed in the canner when they smell right. Seriously. That's how my mom knows. But for those of you who do not know what tomato sauce (for Worms) smells like: 15 minutes of simmering is a good length of time. Today we simmered the tomatoes with the lid on for probably an hour, and then with the lid off for another 30 minutes, trying to cook them down. But we were using the wrong kind of stove, you know?
  
• Pour into quart-sized Mason jars, adding two tablespoons of lemon juice per jar to ensure proper acidity. (If you use pint sized jars, add one tablespoon per jar.)
  
• Wipe the top of the jar, and cover with a vacuum-seal lid that has been in simmering water (but not boiling - that ruins the sealing material). Tighten a band around the jar just until your fingers meet resistance - not too tight!
  
• Process in a water bath for 40 minutes. Then turn the heat off and let them rest for 5 minutes.
  
• Remove jars from water bath. If the bands have loosened during the canning process, Don't worry. Leave them alone. My grandma will roll over in her grave if she sees you messing with those jars.
• Let the jars sit on the counter, or the kitchen table, or somewhere that little (or big) fingers won't touch them for 12-24 hours. If you want, stand nearby and listen to the "Pop!" of the lids sealing. Rejoice that your hot labor in the kitchen means rosy homegrown tomatoes in February. (If you miss the pop, you can tell it is sealed because the lid is concave, or at least flat - not poking up in the middle.)
  
• Store in a dark place. Apparently light affects the nutrient content of canned vegetables.
• If a lid fails to seal, the product is not canned and is not safe to leave out. Put it in the fridge and eat it very soon. (The Ball Blue Book has rules about re-processing the vegetables, but eating it now seems like an easier solution.)
  

(Note: I tried to find a similar recipe in the Ball Blue Book but couldn't find any, so the processing time I used today is what they recommend for canning raw tomatoes. If you like to use very watery tomato sauce for things like chili, and you are planning to use a pressure canner or a water bath, you could probably process your tomatoes raw, rather than simmering them until they smell right. But we don't know if that recipe has killed anyone yet. Just sayin'.)

Check back for an update on the healthfulness of this particular recipe after we've opened up a jar to make a batch of Worms.