There are six ways to store carrots for the winter: canning, freezing, pickling, dehydrating, cold storage in a root cellar, and refrigeration. Do it right and you can easily supply yourself with carrots until Spring.
Some of these ways take more time, effort, or resources than others. I’ll go through each way, showing you how to do it (or provide a link), as well as talk about some of the pros and cons of each method.
Every May I emerge from winter ready to conquer the world and plant an enormous garden, which may have included 27 tomato plants. Every September I end up silently cursing my optimism.
This year, I’ve come up with a better system to get things done while still keeping my sanity. Here’s how.
For those of you who live in warmer climates where all your tomatoes are vine ripened, you can skip this tip. Those of us in Saskatchewan and other USDA zone 2 or 3 areas have to pick most of our tomatoes green and ripen them indoors.
Set out four boxes and divide your tomatoes by colour and ripeness: green, yellow, orange, and red. This way you will be able to grab the ripest box and save precious time that you could be canning. Check your tomatoes every day or two and transfer any outliers to the correct box.
Cut your tomato processing time in half. Find out how!Click To Tweet
I cut my tomatoes in large chunks and squeeze out the seeds. You will not get every single seed out, so if you can’t stand any seeds in your tomato sauce, this is not the method for you. For roma tomatoes, I cut off the top, make a small slit, squeeze out the seeds, and put them into my slow cooker whole. Which brings me to my next point. . .
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to sit around a stove for 3 hours ensuring my sauce doesn’t burn. I also don’t have time to blanch and peel them. I’m happy to deal with the odd bit of tomato skin in my sauce.
I cut up my tomatoes about 6 hours before I know I’ll have time to deal with them again. Throw in other vegetables you want in your sauce such as onions, garlic, zucchini, carrots or squash and walk away.
Somewhere around hour 4-5 I come back and puree the sauce with a stick blender. This ensures that my super picky small child will actually eat the sauce I make.
Let your slow cooker or oven do the heavy lifting. Process your tomatoes with less effort. Click To Tweet
If a slow cooker isn’t your style, you can cut up all your veggies and roast them in the oven. Roasting adds an extra sweet caramelized flavour that I’m a huge fan of.
Put all veggies in a large roasting pan and cook at 400 degrees for at least an hour, or until some of the tops turn a bit black. Let cool, add spices, puree, and either can or freeze in containers.
We are short on freezer space here, so I try to can as many jars as I can. However, I don’t always have the time or energy, so I put my sauce in smaller containers in the freezer and call it a day. If you’re short on space, put your sauce in good quality freezer bags and freeze them flat for easier storage.
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Tomato season unfortunately seems to co-incide with back-to-school season, which in our house is a recipe for beautiful tomatoes going to waste. If you find yourself with almost no time to deal, chop tomatoes in quarters or eights and freeze in plastic bags. It’s not ideal, but you can always thaw frozen tomatoes and deal with them later.
How do you process your tomatoes? Any tips or tricks to add? Let me know in the comments what your favourite method is.
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July is a busy month for the Saskatchewan berry picker. Strawberries start off the month, followed by saskatoon berries, raspberries, and then finally, sour cherries. Of the four, sour cherries are my favourite. Yes, they are a lot of work, but well worth the effort.
We love them so much in our house that my son and I polished off 4 jars of sour cherry jam within one month. It was our whole year’s supply!!
Processing sour cherries is the kind of job that makes a beginner nervous. Sour cherry farms are not as popular as other fruits (at least in our area) so it can be daunting to find a place to pick. The thought of pitting the cherries is scary. Is the cost of a cherry pitter worth it? How do I pit the cherries without one? What can I make with sour cherries?
Did anyone else’s grandma make a red hamburger relish? For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, red relish is sweet and tangy, made with tomatoes, cucumbers, celery & onions.
Despite owning all her recipe books, I could not find the recipe she used.
My initial google searches didn’t turn up many results. However, once I searched hamburger relish things became more clear.
One of my happiest childhood memories is of drinking crab apple juice straight from the jar at my babysitter’s house. The juice was always accompanied by some tasty home baked cookies and delightful conversation. Now that I’m older, I wanted to recreate the magic.
