Canning.

Last Sunday I finally obtained my very own canner after looking for one on Craigslist for a few weeks.  It was a steamer canner (not a pressure canner, they're different), and I was very excited to try it out.  So this morning I did some research online into "steamer canners" only to find that they are not considered safe.  Hmmm.  I was already quite far into my tomato sauce recipe, and was making way more than I needed so I thought there must be another way.  Indeed, there was.

Apparently, a boiling water canner, which is safe for some but not all canning, is an acceptable method of canning tomato sauce.  So I looked into it, and the only difference between a boiling water canner and a large stock pot is that there is a tray at the bottom that allows the cans not to sit on the bottom.  So the canner that I had purchased, although not working exactly as I had anticipated, was also designed to be used, by flipping it over, as a stock pot.  So then I looked into different ways of getting around the tray at the bottom and some people just use a linen wash cloth underneath the jars to keep them from bouncing around on the bottom.  I decided to give it a try.

Tomato sauce.

Today I had planned to try my hand, for the first time, at making homemade pasta sauce, specifically tomato sauce.  I eat a lot of pasta, so knowing how to make homemade sauce is crucial so that I can reduce the amount of bottles and jars that I need to recycle.  I picked up many of the ingredients at Drive Organics (tomatoes, shallots, tomato paste) and a few from Superstore (celery, basil, fresh Italian herb blend).  And some white wine from a liquor store (the cheapest dry white wine I could find). The rest of the ingredients I already had in my kitchen.  The ingredients I used:

1. 9 ripe tomatoes (medium to large)
2. 2 tbsp of oil I had left over from a jar of sundried tomatoes (just use plain olive oil if you don't have anything like this to use)
3. 2 tbsp butter
4. 1 shallot, diced
5. 1 red pepper, diced
6. 4 cloves of garlic, minced
7. 1/4 cup fresh basil
8. 1 tbsp fresh Italian herb blend (less if you are using dried Italian seasoning)
9. 1/4 cup dry white wine
10. 2 stalks of celery
11. 1 small can of tomato paste (mine was 156 mL)
12. Additional seasonings to taste (I added sea salt, pepper, mustard powder, celery seed, dried basil, dried parsley flakes, dried oregano flakes)