My Least Favorite Summer Chore

  Every summer I can tomatoes, and every summer I wonder  why I can tomatoes.  

  It's not like I really enjoy doing it.  Dread is the word that most describes how I feel about canning. And yet ~ I do it every year. It is such a process - cleaning the jars and lids.  

  Putting the tomatoes through a hot water bath and then a cold water bath to loosen the skins.  Then packing the jars and finally putting them in the canner to boil for 55 minutes.  

  I have always found it never fails that canning needs to be done on the hottest days of summer.  Summer heat, plus all that boiling water leads to one hot kitchen.  

  I think I do it because I can't not do it.  Because my Mother did it and it is part of my growing up years.  Because it is providing for my family at the most basic level of living, taking nature's gifts from the ground to the table. But at the end of the day, after all the work and all the sweating, there is the satisfaction of looking at the beautiful jars all lined up.  

  I usually leave the jars set on the kitchen counter top for a few days so I can enjoy their beauty before storing them away. I do love looking at them and it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.  

 

  And there is nothing like going to the pantry on a cold winter day and pulling out a jar of home-canned tomatoes to make a pot of chile or tortellini soup.