Canned Tomatoes! Or, How to Save Your Tomato Babies from Flea Beetles.

My friends!
The cat is back...again!  I apologize for my long absence!  No excuses, I've just been doing a lot of things like this:

 And this:

And of course, a whole bunch of working with awesome kids and making music!

So fire up your range, uncork your Cabernet, and let's get to work!

Have you heard of flea beetles?

They are like they sound.  Teeny, tiny, voracious little monsters that devour every tomato leaf in their path (and apparently the occasional kale plant).  Matt and I had noticed a couple of weeks ago that our tomato leaves had roughly one million miniscule holes in them, and thusly were turning brown and falling off.  We thought we had taken care of the issue with some organic blight spray, which didn't work even a little; enter the flea beetles.

Most of you are familiar with my bug issue.  If not: I have a bug issue.  After a few years of being the primary gardener in our household, it's improved slightly, but my general knee jerk reaction to anything with more than four legs is to turn it to putty.  Spare me your lecture of "Blah, blah, blah good bugs versus bad bugs, don't kill the Daddy long legs, blah."  Don't care.  If it's in my hair or on my body it will be dispatched of forth with.

Flea beetles are so little.  Like, so little.  You can't even see them unless you're looking.  Unless, of course, you've made your sweatshirt into a kangaroo pouch and filled it with roughly 30 roma tomatoes, and as you innocently dump them into the sink to be washed, a conservative estimate of 12 billion little black vermin swarm OUT OF YOUR CLOTHING and take over your ENTIRE kitchen counter.  Seriously, no one will ever make me feel bad about smashing ANY bug, ever again. 

The internet and I conspired to kill these hungry little jerks together.  After maybe a solid five minutes of searching, we determined that there IS NO EXISTING PESTICIDE organic or otherwise that will effectively eliminate all signs of flea beetles.  None.  Someone suggested on a forum of equally grossed out gardeners that they don't like chili oil.  Some had found success with garlic.  Not wanting to be perceived as not taking this seriously, I promptly put ten garden chilis, 4 cloves of garlic, water and oil in the food processor.  I smelled it, and about fell over.  For real guys, it still burns when I blow my nose.  It might forever, who's to say?  I figured that applying this directly to the fruit could result in some seriously caustic tomatoes, so I poured it all over the base of 10 tomato plants.  They're not dead yet (the plants or the bugs), so here's to hoping, right?  Also if you come over to my house, maybe don't play in any of my dirt, because it might melt your fingers off of your body.

But I digress... This is just a really long way of telling you that I've been canning all of my tomatoes as soon as they even turn pink on the vine.  The bugs don't seem to care much for the actual tomato fruit itself, but I figure they're bound to run out of leaves sometime, and it could turn ugly.

I have a lot of fond memories of canning with my Mom as a kid.  We made countless jars of pickles and tomatoes.  Occasionally, I'll still get to can with her when I come home for a weekend in the fall.  This is my first year attempting tomatoes on my own, and it's unbelievably satisfying to have those fresh jars all lined up on the counter, so much so that you leave them there for several weeks to admire until your husband suggests that they be given a new home in the pantry.

As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out as to whether or not canning actually saves you any money, especially for the first couple of years, unless you have a seriously productive garden, or a plentiful stock pile of mason jars.  After your first couple of seasons, all you should really have to purchase are the fresh lids, but until then it's more of a feeling of accomplishment with the added bonus of having preservative free veggies until next year.  While canning, I personally like to envision myself as Xena, warrior farm-woman of the prairie, who's muscular thighs propel her through her fields of plump, ripe tomatoes, while her arms of steel place them into her home spun basket, made from the bones of her enemies.  But that's just me.  My personal experience has been fairly cost effective as I inherited a water bath canner from my Mom's basement, and I don't can it unless I grew it... paying by the pound to put up tomatoes is really only saving you the unnecessary ingredients that they incorporate into canned food from the store.

This is a supply-heavy process.  I haven't really come across any ways to MacGyver canning... the whole risk of botulism thing is kind of a turn off.  You will need:

-A steam, or immersion (water bath-which is what I use) canner WITH A RACK!  If you place the cans directly on the bottom of the pot on the burner, you risk them cracking.
-pint jars (for this particular recipe) with new, never before used lids, and rings.
-A silicone padded jar lifter, or heavy duty oven mitts to lift out your entire rack.
-A small sauce pan for heating the lids.
-A larger stock pot for boiling the skin off the tomatoes.
-A slotted spoon.
-A large colander.

Your stove will look like this (minus the salsa because this is an old picture...):

Also, your house will be REALLY hot.  Pick a coolish day to can.

Ingredients:
-As many tomatoes as you want to can.  It takes about six-eight roma tomatoes to fill a pint jar.
-Lemon juice (store bought is fine)
-Salt

Fill your water bath canner approximately 3/4s of the way full.  Put your jars (without lids) in the rack in the pot to sterilize them.  Bring water to boil on high heat- allow to boil until you're ready to use the jars.  This will take approximately forever, so while you wait:  Put the lids with some water in the small sauce pan, bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, allow to simmer until you are ready to use.  Bring water to a boil in the large stock pot.

While you wait for all that water to boil, core and score your tomatoes with an "X" on the bottom.  This is my Mom's favorite part.  She likes to pretend they're the people that frustrate her, which is a totally healthy way to cope with stress.  Fill your sink with cold water for later.  Once your stock pot is boiling, put the cored tomatoes in the water for 30 seconds to 1 minute, until you see the skin just start to crack.  It's helpful to do this in smaller batches (no more than 10 tomatoes at a time).  Take the tomatoes out of the hot water, and put them in the cold.  Repeat until all of your tomatoes are in the cold water.  Remove the skins (they should slide off easily, if not, you can throw them back in the hot water for a second).  Place the tomatoes in the colander.

Obviously those haven't been cored yet, I'm just showing off my Instagram skillz...

When your tomatoes are ready, and your water is boiling in the canner, you can carefully pull the sterilized mason jars out of the canner.  Place on a kitchen towel on the counter near your tomatoes.

For each jar:
-Fill half way with tomatoes (mush into jar).
-For pint jars, add 1 tbsp of lemon juice, and 1 tsp salt.
-Fill the rest of the way, leaving about a half an inch of head room.
-Wipe the rim of the jar, make sure it's really clean or it might not seal!
-Remove lids from simmering water, screw down rings until just barely finger tight.
-Using jar lifter, place jars back in the hot water bath, make sure the lids are covered by about 2 inches of water.

-Cover, wait for water to return to a boil (I know, this takes forever, remember, you are Xena!  Canning war goddess, or God!  To the best of my knowledge, Xena is a gender neutral name!)
-Once water is boiling, keep covered, set timer for 15 minutes.
-After 15 minutes, remove from water, set on towel to cool.
-Any unsealed jars should seal as they cool (you can tell if they're sealed by tapping the top, no sound = sealed), if you want to make double sure, you can turn the cans upside down on their lids after they've cooled for a few minutes.

(For quart jars, use 2 tbsp lemon juice, 2 tsp salt.  Process for 25 minutes instead of 15.)

Voila!  Delicious, preservative free tomatoes!  I've read that shelf life is anywhere from six months to a year, but I know people who say it's fine as long as the jar is still sealed and the contents are unchanged (color, fluid level).  Once opened, refrigerate.  You go, canning Goddess!  You are truly a vision of garden warrior success!

As always, Butterballs, thanks for reading!  Here's to a few more weeks of beautiful weather, delicious food, and time on the water (or boiling it if you're canning tomatoes...)

Best Fishes!
XOXOX

Grilled Balsamic Pork Roast! Or, under-done meat, demon neighbor children, and other things you don't want at your BBQ...

Good afternoon, dear, sweet, Butterballs!
How delightful it is to be able to have the time to write to you on more than just a every so often basis!  Thanks a bunch for reading and all the shares!  It's so awesome to know that the fat cat is reaching more than just my personal audience!

As I pen today's blog, I am being serenaded by the dulcet screams of neighbor children.  Now, one might assume that I should be concerned for the safety of said screaming neighbor children.  No.  They're fine.  They just spend all their time screaming.  All day strong, all day long.  Poor Dexter has been spending 99.9% of his time barking wildly at them from the safety of his doggy bed in front of the window since school got out in June.  They don't limit their time to wailing at the top of their lungs in my front yard.  Oh no.  They divide the rest of their time equally between standing smack in the middle of the street playing handheld video games, racing you on their bikes when you drive into the cul de sac, and picking all of our flowers and leaving them in piles on the sidewalk.  Most recently, i.e. five minutes ago, our littlest cherub walked up to the window by our front door, and started pounding on the glass in Dexter's face, as he froths at the mouth, hoping for a sweet chunk of baby meat.  Who needs birth control, amiright?  It's because of these angelic little darlings that Matt and I have mostly retired the wine porch in front of the house, in favor of the much more private, nice and quiet back porch.  There's only so many times you can be asked, "What are you eating?  Can I have some?", by a complete stranger while trying to enjoy your hastily made porch dinner until you eventually snap.  So, Matt and I decided to build a patio in the backyard, since A. We hate watering our crappy grass, and B. Our front patio was no longer safe from the sticky little fingers of death.

It started out easy enough.  Just digging a 60 square foot hole in the grass behind our garage.

Then came the trip to Lowe's.  Then the trip to Home Depot.  Then another trip to Lowe's.  Then it was 11 o'clock and I wanted that SOB finished, so I slapped all the pavers on top of the sand and called it a deck.

We had a couple days of rain, and we weren't able to use it yet.  It wasn't until Matt was outside a couple days later, and our neighbor handed us an enormous set of dirt levelers (completely well-intentioned of course...) that we realized there was an issue.  We went out in the backyard, and everything had totally shifted and fallen apart.  Then came another trip to Lowe's.  2nd time's the charm with patio building apparently, because after some serious Googling, we eventually figured out what it was supposed to look like.  Hooray!  Now we just needed some stuff to put on it to cover the remaining physical imperfections.

If you were my first graders I might ask, "What are some things you could do outside, on a patio?"  You might answer, "Read a book!", "Play with my dog!", "Spiderman!".  All of which would be excellent answers.  Except Spiderman.  The answer I'm clearly looking for is, "Drink beer and BBQ, Mrs. Raffety!"  Yes, little Billy, you know me so well!  My parents and I went in on a grill for Matt for his birthday last Sunday, and to date, I've spent more time playing with it than he has, but no one is really surprised by that are they?  So, crack open your favorite summer ale, and join me on your half-assed patio, kids, because it's time for balsamic pork roast!

Pork roast?  How will that get done on a gas grill?  Hey, you know, it doesn't.  Not unless you give it enough time at the right temperature.  So, I'm editing this a smidge so you don't have to cut yours in half to get it finished because you are hangry, and you've already eaten all of your asparagus just hot off the grill.  Not that that happened to me or anything.  I'm a professional.  *serious cook face*.

Pork roast is a great blank canvas for whatever flavor du jour you're gunning for.  It can be a lot of fun to mess around with different flavor combos.  I can't take credit for this little factoid because I know I read it somewhere else...  But!  A good formula to stick with is acid + oil + seasoning.  So in this particular instance we went with, balsamic vinegar and chardonnay + olive oil + dijon mustard, parsley, salt, pepper and chilli flake.  Buh-bam!  Marinade.  Easy-Peasy.  Apologies in advance that there are no food photos of this particular endeavor.  Just picture a cantaloupe sized piece of meat smothered in delicious.  See?  Not so hard :)

You'll need:
a 3-4 lb. pork roast (or, turkey breast, but I tend to shy away from super strong flavor combos with turkey since it's so flavorful on it's own...)
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar (cheap!  You're mixing it with what I can only assume will be equally cheap white wine after all.)
1/2 cup white wine, I used chardonnay
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp. parsley
2 tbsp. dijon mustard
salt and pepper to taste
a little chili flake, 'cuz that's how we do...

Whisk all of that together (except the pork roast... which goes without saying), reserve about a third of it for glazing as you grill.  Marinate the pork roast for about an hour, flipping a couple of times.  Heat your grill to high, sear the roast on all sides.  Turn your center burners down to medium, with the roast over those, and close the grill lid.  Turn every fifteen minutes or so (adding a coat of marinade) for about an hour, or until your pork reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees.  Cut into slices.  We ate it with grilled asparagus and potato salad.

Some other marinade combos you might enjoy:

• White wine + olive oil + sriracha, parsley, cumin, salt and pepper
• Lime juice + olive oil + sriracha, chili flake, garlic salt, pepper, cilantro
• Balsamic vinegar + olive oil + basil, salt and pepper
• White wine and lemon juice (be careful, it's a slippery slope) + olive oil + rosemary, salt and pepper

 Voila!  Stay tuned for more grill-tastic recipes!  Hope your summer is all the fun you've been hoping for.  Have a cold one for me!  As always, Butterballs, thanks for reading, lots of love and best fishes from me, Matt, Dexter, and the fat cat!