Canning Pasta Sauce

As you can see... the tomatoes were taking over my kitchen.  Something had to be done!  

Handy tip that was passed on to me:  dip tomatoes into boiling water for about 30 seconds and the skins will slide right off when you attempt to peel them.  Works marvelously! 

Remove from boiling water and place in ice water.  (Mom skips this step - I think it's just to cool the tomatoes before you attempt to handle them) 

Slice off the very end of the tomato (stem end) and the skin slides off very easily.  I wanted a smooth sauce so I chopped my tomatoes into pieces that would fit into my handy dandy chopper.   I've read that if you want your sauce to be thicker that it's a good idea to (as you peel and slice) stick your finger or thumb into the seed cavities and squeeze most of the liquid/seeds into your scrap bucket and aim at just keeping the meat of the tomato.  Even though I would prefer a thicker sauce, I felt like this was a big waste.  I did it on some, but not nearly all.  

I tried using a blender so that I could blend more tomatoes at a time, but it left the sauce very frothy.  I like the consistency of the sauce using this little Rival chopper I picked up from Wal-Mart for $10. 

 

After the fine chopping is done I'm left with this much tomato sauce.  (I was running out of large containers!  A single girl doesn't have a lot of need for huge containers much...)

Now for the seasonings.... 

A little bit of this.... a smidgen of that.... 

Now to stir and wait... and wait.... and wait... while it cooks down a bit and absorbs those spices.  

When it's done it looks something like this: 

Now I'd have loved to take pictures during the canning process, but I kinda got caught up in the maneuvering of jars, lids, funnel... and forgot.  Sorry.   But here is the end result: 

18 quarts Spaghetti/Italian Pasta Sauce 

Bonus:  There was just enough left for supper. *wink*