Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

This past week, we ended up with about 8-10 pounds of tomatoes in our CSA basket.  I've made salad a couple of times this past week, but I'm quickly running out of ideas to use these guys up before they go bad.  So...I decided to make and can some pizza sauce to use throughout the year.  I generally can applesauce and peaches each year, but I've never canned tomatoes before.  Lucky for me, I have a copy of Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving!  If you don't have a canning book, check out pickyourown.org, which has a TON of how to stuff on canning.

Now guys, canning is not hard.  It's SO easy.  I taught myself a few years ago and if you can boil water, you can do it.  For fruits, you just need a basic water bath canner (which basically means you seal the jars in boiling water).  Basically, you make your sauce, fill some jars, put them in the boiling water, walk away and come back 35 minutes later and you're done!  This pizza sauce is totally paleo and we always make our applesauce paleo as well--just apples and that's it!  When I do that later this fall, I'll post more of a how to for those who are interested.

Here's what I started with -- a mixture of a few different kinds of tomatoes.  I'm not sure exactly what kind I've got here, but the sauce ended up tasted great.

Our finished project!  It may only be six jars, but that should last us most of the year, as we only have pizza once or twice a month and we'll only use half a jar each time.  And the only ingredients are tomatoes, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper.