Phew! That was tiring!

Okay, so after noticing that Ontario tomatoes are in stores, and given my recent canning exploration, I decided that this weekend I would can as much basic tomato sauce as I could make with 4 baskets of tomatoes. As it turns out, this is 4-1L jars and 1-250mL jar, plus approximately 8 hours of work(!) and one very messy kitchen.

Sadly, one of the 1L jars didn't vacuum seal, so I have to devise a plan for using that much tomato sauce within the next two weeks. Potential projects: canning chili, ratatouille or gheymeh. The funny part is that I probably would have opened a 1L jar within that time any way, since I didn't sample more than a teaspoon of the sauce while I was making it (I didn't want to end up having an incomplete jar).

Two lessons learned: 1) make sure you have a pot big enough to hold the jars you're processing -- this means I'm probably going to have a ridiculously large pot to stash somewhere in our storage-challenged apartment; 2) consulting a recipe beforehand means no last-minute trips to the grocery store to pick up a vital piece of the recipe -- I'll likely invest in a canning "bible" this week.

The canning tools kit that Emma got me as a birthday present was indispensible (thanks again, Em!).

Since the kitchen was in a shambles afterwards, I took the opportunity to rearrange items in the kitchen cupboards, hiding random things which had been sitting on the counters and pulling others out and into decorative containers. I'm much happier with the way things look now.

Also of note: these make excellent, inexpensive spoon rests and I finally got a salt mill.