Canning Tomatoes

Here's the canning I did (with the help of my mom for a couple hours) on Monday. She brought her two giant pots and we filled them with tomatoes! All of the tomatoes for the soup (these two pots full) are from my in-laws garden, it was about a bushel.

After she left, both pots were ready to make into soup. I took off about 2 quarts of water and poured it down the drain, then reserved another 3 quarts in case the soup was too thick. I used the blender to make the soup, it was much faster than running the tomatoes through my victorian mill (I call it the coney mill since it's cone shaped). After I'd run the tomatoes (and onions and celery) through, I added the other seasonings and the reserved juice, and ended up with the biggest pot full of soup. You can see my waterbath pot next to the soup pot... so you can tell it's a pretty big pot!And here's the tomato stuff I've canned so far this summer. The other evening I washed all the jars and got them on the pantry shelves. The dark red is plain sauce, and the oranger looking stuff is the soup. I've not canned tomato soup before (Daniel is not a big soup eater), but this is a really yummy recipe and I know we'll enjoy it this winter.

14 quarts, 5 pints of soup, and 9 quarts, 5 pints of sauce.