Step, Backstep, Step Home Tomato Preservation

First:  have someone give your
niece, Eva Girl at The Opulent Poppy, lots of tomatoes!
So many tomatoes, in fact,
that she fills her canner several times
and decides she has enough
tomatoes put by.

Second:  Have said niece call
and ask you if you want some tomatoes.

Third:  send your son to pick up
the tomatoes and some Subway.
(If you are canning, everything
else may have to be put on hold.)

Fourth:  wash some tomatoes,
cut out the stem ends, add water
and put them on to cook. 

Fifth:  pull out the big strainer.
After all, nine quarts of tomato juice
justifies the use of the "big guns!"

Sixth:  discover that the "O" ring
for the shaft is missing.

Seventh:  re-box the handy
dandy, gallons in minutes
machine.

Eighth:  go "down cellar"
and get the good old Foley food mill.

Ninth: finally get your two biggest
kettles made into juice.

Tenth: decide the consistency is
too thin and put it back on the stove
to boil down.

Eleventh: decide it's time
for bed.

 Twelfth:  dig out the
BIG slow cooker and transfer
the juice to it.

Thirteenth: turn on the slow cooker
(this step is important.)

Fourteenth: go to bed.

Fifteenth: check the juice in
the night.

Sixteenth: turn the cooker down.
(this may be a mistake)

Seventeenth: Getting up in the
morning, review "tomato juice"
and "tomatoes" in  faithful
old Ball Blue Book.

Eighteenth: cut & core tomatoes.

Nineteenth: mash down tomatoes
to get them juicy enough so they
won't burn right off!

Twentieth: strain more juice.

Twenty-first: Wash the jars and keep
them hot in the canner which
you remembered to fill and
start whilst fixing the tomatoes.
(ahem)

Twenty-second: start the juice filled
jars processing in the canner.

Twenty-third: start a kettle of
tomatoes in the same way,
planning to can some tomatoes.
(Juice is too time consuming.)

Twenty-fourth: sit down with your
Ball Blue Book and discover
that there is a step-by-step
(with photographs)
specifically for canning
tomatoes.

Twenty-fifth:  Mentally
smack forehead, because NOW
you remember that you've
done it that way, many times.

Twenty-sixth:  bottle, salt and
process the unnecessarily hot
tomatoes.

Twenty-seventh: look at your
six quarts of tomato juice

and your five pints of tomatoes
and decide,
"I may be dumb to have
forgotten how to can tomatoes,
but it was worth it, anyway!" :)

P.S.  The proper (and easy)
way to can tomatoes is
a lot faster and less complicated than
my "wing-it-from-what-I-think-I-remember" method.