Canning is a Family Affair

Once upon a time, I thought store-bought spaghetti sauce was the shiznit.  My mother in law ruined that delightful fallacy when she served me her homemade spaghetti sauce for the very first time. Curse her and her delicious concoctions! Ignorance was bliss. Now that I had the lust for this amazing sauce, I had to have it.  Store bought sauce now tasted like ketchup to me. For a while, my mother in law would keep me stocked up on her home canned tomatoes but then I decided to try growing and canning my own.  What was I thinking? Gardening is most things that I loathe. I don’t like being outside, being hot, being in the sun, sweating, getting dirty, and I friggin hate bugs. I've been told I'm a bit of a princess. I feel this is an excellent time to mention that raw tomatoes are near the top of my most hated foods list. In their natural form, they taste like what I imagine poison must taste like. If I was being tortured to give up valuable intelligence, I would hold up to waterboarding but crack when force-fed raw tomatoes. I might be exaggerating a little but tomatoes are a disgusting fruit. Before we moved to our current home, we tried our hand at gardening at a community garden. The tomato plants grew huge and we canned, and canned, and canned. We now have four gardens at our home. We use tomatoes in homemade spaghetti sauce and in homemade chili.  Most years we even make and can our own salsa. I only can tomatoes that I grow in my own garden. There is something so rewarding about starting something from seed, planting it, harvesting it, and eating it, that it seems to taste better. The very best part is that the kids get excited about the gardens we have and they love helping to pick and can our harvested fruits and vegetables. Gardening and canning is time well spent with those you love most.