Today was supposed to be a no canning day – mostly stay out of the kitchen kind of day – didn’t happen. I went outside with the dogs early this morning and noticed the Black Strawberry tomatoes were stacking up. They aren’t our favorite tomato – not bad but there are others we like better. My favorite cherry/small tomato is the Sweet 100. Those Black Strawberry tomatoes are producing like crazy, even in this awful heat.
I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I didn’t want to have to peel them and I didn’t want to use the peelings. I chopped them, peelings and all, using the little hand chopper.
There were more tomatoes there than I expected. Once they were chopped, I added bell pepper, jalapeno peppers, onions, a bit cumin and chili powder, salt and pepper and let it simmer for an hour or so. Then I ran it all through the food mill, put it in half pint jars and water bath canned it.
When I make Spanish rice, I’ve never been able to make it that I felt was really good. I think this may be just what I need to get a Spanish rice I like. It’s a bit thicker than tomato juice but not as thick as tomato sauce. There are no chunks in it. I think adding one jar, and 1 cup of water to 1-1/2 cup of rice may be perfect. It smelled so good and tasted great so I’m very hopeful.
Next, since I’m trying to make room in the freezers, I grabbed 8 packages of frozen blueberries. There are several local blueberry farms near us and we always pick too many. I made blueberry pie filling and got 14 pints.
A pint of pie filling is about perfect for a small pie for the two of us. We either cut them into six very small pieces or four average size pieces. Some of you may remember this post from 2018 when I freeze dried a bunch of sweet potato pie filling and put it up in amounts to make small pies. Last year when I had so many sweet potatoes, I made more of that pie filling and freeze dried it.
I would love to add jars of apple, peach and pear pie filling and, of course, cherry pie filling.