Canning Tomatoes

After freezing 10 quarts of tomato sauce, I returned to the garden to pick more tomatoes. In less than 20 minutes, I had two five-gallon buckets full of tomatoes.

Canning time!

For the past few years, I avoided canning and just froze tomato sauce. However, with a bumper crop of tomatoes (and the recent chicken massacre), I am running out of freezer space.

So I dug through the cookbooks until I found the "canning Bible."

This is the Ball Blue Book -- circa 1944, that belonged to my grandmother.

I studied the picture, then I looked at myself, decked out in tattered jeans and t-shirt, and hair pulled into a pony tail. I don't own anything with ruffles.

When I'm finished canning, I'm pretty sure I won't be smiling so serenely. I'm sure I'll be a little sweaty and a lot covered in tomato juice.

But, I'm also sure I'll have found memories of canning tomatoes with my mother and grandmother.