Tomato Crazyness!

Last Sunday after church, we went to the market and got 2 1/2 bushels of field tomatoes.  (One bushel for 10$ – we got screwed with the 1/2 bushel at the market downtown…. but that’s another story!)

We wanted to make tomato juice and diced tomatoes for the upcoming winter time.  We decided to do these first and in a few days do some salsa.   The cheapest price we had found for a bushel of Roma tomato was 15$.  So we were planning to get some after a much needed break…

The tomatoes were big and tasty.   The kids embarked in an afternoon of cutting tomatoes.

Dominic already had experience with Alexandre from last year.

Jasmine was too small to use a sharp knife so her job was to give the tomatoes to her big brothers.

Here you can see Jasmine bringing tomatoes and Rob explaining to Jérémy how to be careful with the knife and cut the tomatoes.

The three kids were sitting at the breakfast table to cut the tomatoes.

Jérémy was a pro in no time and spend the afternoon cutting tomatoes.

At about 5pm my husband send me to an errand to get much needed lids as we had to throw older ones.   I drove to the local Wal-Mart and grabbed some much needed things like milk for example.   While turning the corner I saw that there was a bushel 1/9 for 9.99$.   WHAT?   Could it be?   I called hubby which couldn’t believe it either.   He told me to get two bushels… guess we won’t take a break to make the salsa.   I grabbed some corn, onions (even drove to Sobey’s for more onions) and drove back home.   The cashier at Wal-Mart thought I had lots of tomatoes – no kidding…

Well on Monday we started doing our salsa.   After a few with corn, we decided to include peaches/nectarines or pineapple that we had already.    That’s gives us a more fruity salsa which we tend to prefer.  By the end of the day, we had gone through about a bushel and a half.   But we had no more mason jars and no more onions…   Since it is Labour Day nothing is open… We have to wait until tomorrow…  

On Tuesday, we bought what we needed to finish our salsa and here’s the result of our days of canning this year!

We stopped counting after 139 jars…..  I think we added another 24 or so.  

Anyone want to come and feast on salsa and chips?