Are you a localvore?

This article talks about one of the biggest changes I'm trying to make to the way my family eats. I think it's important to think about where your food is grown and produced and how far it has to travel to get to your table. Food transport requires a great deal of oil, storage space, and sometimes chemical ripening in order for the food to be the proper ripeness when it gets where it's going.

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Endangered Produce Rescue Operation

I "rescued" some doomed produce from the reject rack at the grocery store last week and spent a day canning tomatoes for the winter.

I dropped them into boiling water first in order to loosen the skins.....

And then into ice water they go. This is a nifty trick...you can then just slip the skins off the tomatoes. Much better than trying to peel them with a vegetable peeler!

Naked tomatoes... :)

The crushing process... These tomatoes will be used in place of canned crushed tomatoes in things like pasta sauce, chili, pizza sauce, etc.

Just boil the crushed tomatoes for about 5 minutes and then into the jars they go. I don't have a picture of filling the jars or the jars in the canner because this part needs to be done quite quickly and it's a little hard to deal with boiling hot tomato goo and snap pictures at the same time (especially when you're trying very hard to avoid dropping the camera in the tomato goo).Finished product ready for the shelves in the basement! I got 9 jars (500mL each) from $6 worth of tomatoes!