It wasn’t the best timing, but the day we got home was when San Marzano tomatoes were ready for pickup and canning through a local CSA. So within a couple hours of dropping our bags at home I lugged home the two flats and then had to get to work immediately to avoid any further fruit fly infestations. {Leaving fruit flies around when we left for a month made me a tad anxious they’d turn our place into a fruit fly crack house. Could be I’ve been watching a lot of Breaking Bad lately?}
Two flats made for about 15 cans and 8 bags of tomato sauce (a full sandwich bag is the perfect amount to cover one pizza fyi).
To my pleasant surprised Henry was completely intrigued by the process and allowing him to help with a simple step (like filling the jars with the funnel) entertained him for hours which made it so much more enjoyable for me as well + less tv watching to fry his toddler brain!
I think I’m going to get him more involved with dinner preparation, which is always the trickiest time to keep him entertained. Do you like to cook with your kids too? It’s a heartwarming thought to imagine that I am one step closer to my goal of delegating all of my household duties to my 3 yr old. Ha!
spraying water with a little Dawn dish soap on it keeps the fruit flies away!
also, nice tomatoes!
Too much Breaking Bad can cause you to suspect that your kids' science teachers are all moonlighting as meth/heroin cooks and that your local fast food branch manager is actually a psychotic drug lord in disguise…
So happy you did this!
WOW… jetlag and putting up tomatoes! Looks wonderful. Please share recipe for the freezer pizza sauce.
YES! My husband and I joke…"joke"…all the time about how we can't wait until we can make the kids do all the house work!My 4 year-old daughter loves to cook with me. She'll sprinkle seasonings, pour pre-measured ingredients, and loves to "stir" thigs. It's so much easier to cook when she's 'helping' than when she's trying to get my attention with something else! And now my 13 month-old is getting to where he wants to be underfoot in the kitchen too. I can't wait until he can 'help' out too!
Beautiful! Yes, it seems that the more I involve Wren in the entire process from growing to harvesting to eating or canning/freezing/jamming, the more healthy stuff she wants to eat and the happier we all are. They just love to help and some of these jobs seem just perfect for small hands and interested brains. cheers to a beautiful autumnal harvest!
M and E- I'm kicking myself for not canning salsa, I might just have to get on that this weekend!
Love the look of those tomatoes in jars and what a perfect way to preserve some of the summer flavours!
With a 2.5 year old and a one year old, I find food prep time the HARDEST EVER. Someone is inevitably trying to pull my pants down! Something that should take moments to prepare, takes hours, between direction and redirection and playing referee. Can't wait until mine can help! Or at least do some laundry while I'm busy!
Your tomatoes look gorgeous! We discovered a new recipe for salsa, so instead of canning whole tomatoes, we've been canning salsa all summer. And when I say all summer, I mean we've spent three weekends in a row making salsa and have canned over 40 pints. Are we obsessed? Perhaps…
GORGEOUS tomatoes…it'll almost be a shame to use them since they look so nice in their jars 🙂
My goal is for Andrew to be doing all the cooking by the time he is 8 or 9 :)Those tomatoes look sooo good!
That's awesome! I love to see that I am not the only crazy canner, having put up 50 lbs of tomatoes myself the other day. Aren't they soooo much better than store bought? I feel like this is something that you can really tell the difference.
That's a great idea! I love tomatoes!-Lyndsayhttp://www.etsy.com/people/lsenerch?ref=si_prhttp://craftanista.blogspot.com/
I love that your son helped. The canned tomaotes look delic.
I wish I would've had the chance to cook with my mother when I was younger 🙂