Musical Stock Pots — Janet Szabo

Making tomato sauce involves moving tomatoes from one stock pot to another as they cook down. I keep the sink full of hot soapy water, and as I empty one pot into another, I wash the empty pot and set it aside until I run the tomato pulp through the food mill. The sauce goes into the clean pot to cook down a bit more, and then those pots get combined. I invested in half a dozen high-quality stainless stock pots of various sizes several years ago and I have never regretted it. I said to the husband yesterday morning that the only thing that would make canning easier in my kitchen would be a six-burner Viking range, but that’s up there in the “nice to have but not essential” category.

I got 27 quarts of sauce from the first round of tomatoes:

Those 27 quarts used up approximately one-fourth of the tomatoes in the freezer, so I am on track to produce around 100 quarts this year. That may be more than we actually use, but I’m doing some for DD#2, as well, and it never hurts to have extras. I aim for a two-year supply for most canned goods.

I am taking a break from tomatoes today. We’re under another winter storm watch starting tomorrow afternoon, so I want to run errands today while the weather is relatively decent. I’ll bring another wheelbarrow load of tomatoes over tomorrow morning and start the next batch of sauce.

These jars represent so much more than just food. These jars are all the seeds I planted, the seedlings I nurtured, the plants I kept watered, and the tomatoes I harvested. This is six months of hard work and I am almost as proud of this food as I am of my children. I know what went into these jars and I know this sauce is full of nutritious ingredients that will nourish our bodies.

[I ingested something that must have contained soybean oil the other day. I’m usually pretty careful about avoiding processed foods and reading labels, but I’ve been trying to use up some of the leftovers from the week of partying and I got sloppy. The offending food caused almost immediate and painful joint and muscle aches. I took some ibuprofen and they went away (which is how I know the pain is from inflammation). Interestingly, products from “health food” stores are sometimes the worst offenders because they are loaded with soy. And then I have to wonder how many people have been diagnosed with “arthritis” when it’s really just a reaction to some ingredient in what they’re eating.]

This early snow has caused panic for people trying to get their construction projects dried in before winter. The husband got back from one job around 5 pm last night, came in to say hello, then headed out to another job to put concrete blankets on a slab (it was 20 degrees when I got up this morning). He came back an hour later but then had to go out to the pig pasture to disconnect the water line and make sure the pigs had enough straw to burrow in to keep warm overnight. It was 7 pm by the time he came in to eat dinner.

I really appreciate the online community that has grown up around Nicole Sauce’s Living Free in Tennessee podcast. When social media gets overwhelmed by people whining about what they don’t have—or posting from Starbucks on their new iPhone about the evils of capitalism—I wander over to the LFTN MeWe group and read about what kinds of “get stuff done” projects people are working on. At our last family dinner together at the end of wedding week, the discussion turned to how hard it is to find people who are willing to work. I looked around and counted among our number two physicians, a dentist, a banker, two people who own their own companies, a philanthropist, an occupational therapist, someone who aspires to take over running Nordstrom, and a chicken farmer (that would be me, LOL). That was most definitely a group of people who understands the value of hard work. I have less and less patience these days for people who are looking for the easy solutions and think they can be found in the voting booth.

(Steps down from soapbox.)

I am going to eke out some time to sew this weekend, even if it’s just a bunch of straight seams on some window shades. I work hard, but I know how to play hard, too, and sometimes they look like the same thing.