Fall's Saucy Harveset

I have 5 tomato plants. I love homegrown tomatoes...a lot.  I can grow tomatoes pretty well, unlike zucchini.  I'm probably the only person that is begging my zucchini plant for more.

(Look how many more tomatoes I'm going to get this fall! This is only one of the plants)

 After a week of promising Mike I was going to make something with the 30 tomatoes that have made their home on our kitchen counter,  I finally made some of Cozette's spaghetti sauce.  It's really good :)

 It takes about 4 hours total to make this sauce. She cans it. I don't have a canner, so I just throw it in freezer bags and stick them in the deep freeze.  It's the lazy way to preserve the bounty!

Which is good because I have to make another batch of spaghetti sauce today with the tomatoes I picked yesterday.  The recipe takes 12 cups of tomatoes. It's about this whole bucket.

I was trying to take a picture of the tomatoes without waking Max up from his mid-morning nap.  I knew if I woke him up, he would want to come in the house and he's not allowed in when I'm cooking.   He heard the click of my camera and came running.  Then, he proceeded to bark for 5 minutes in case I didn't see him.  "Yes, Maximus, I see you.  I am ignoring your cute face!"

(Yes, those are dog wet nose marks on the window.  I guess I will need to clean that today, too).

 All those tomatoes and all I got was 4.5 quart sized bags of sauce. Doesn't seem fair.  Seems like there should be enough to feed the world after all the work it took!

But, at least it didn't take as long as canning these pears.  My Mom came up with Stacie's canner the day before we left for Jackson.  The pears came from Oregon through church and we weren't sure when they were going to arrive.  Luck had it that it was just days before our 5 day vacation. They were a little green, but I worried about them turning ripe while we were gone and inviting a million zillion fruit flies to visit.  

My Mom and I chatted about it and decided that they might get softer after being canned and sitting in the juice.  Well, they didn't get soft enough.  They really aren't very good.  They are edible still, but I'm sure I'm the only one that would eat them.

Sorry Mom that you wasted that day helping me try to put some food away for the 'winter' but the kids and I loved having you here!  We love your company and thank you for teaching Sydney and me how to can pears!  We'll have to try it again with ripe fruit ;)

 Happy Eating!