‘Tis the time for fresh-canned tomatoes
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ESCANABA -- I remember the days when tomatoes took over our kitchen.
My parents always kept a nice sized garden in the backyard.
By mid-September, the garden was red with ripe tomatoes. Picking them was a chore for us kids. Before the threat of frost, it was our job to gather the tomatoes into boxes. The boxes were layered with newspaper, with the greenest tomatoes on the bottom and the ripest ones on the top.
Next came out the canner. There's nothing like the feel of canning fresh tomatoes. First you select a basket of prime red tomatoes to be dunked into boiling water to have their skins scalded loose.
Then they are immediately tossed in to cold water. The fun begins by slipping off all of the tomato skins. The slippery tomatoes are then packed into sterilized glass canning jars.
Cleaning the canning jars was like a walk back in time. Some of the thick, blue-glass Kerr and Ball jars belonged to my grandmother or aunties. Rings and lids are counted and lined up on the cupboard.
If only each jar could talk and tell the story of all the foods it held over the years. If they could talk about their time in the cellar waiting to be selected. And finally, the moment of freedom when they were enjoyed as stewed tomatoes or simmered into spaghetti sauce.
Having home canned tomatoes embellishes so many recipes. Soups, salsa and chili just wouldn't taste the same without home-canned tomatoes.
In the days when tomatoes took over our house, canning was done on several days as the fruit ripened in their boxes.
The whole house was transformed into a steamy cannery for a few hours.
After the long hot water bath, strong arms lift the eight quarts carefully onto the drying towel. The best music to a home canner is the ping, ping, pings the jars make as they seal.
It's funny after you start picking tomatoes, they start looking like they have faces or are shaped like hearts or pears.
So if you have a tomato patch that needs harvesting, call together some helpers. Have a tomato day!
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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.