TOMATO JAM

 Darrell gives a lot of his sawdust to a gardener friend who sometimes brings us eggs from his hens.  Today he gave us some beautiful tomatoes, ripe and lucious.  I wanted to make some Tomato Jam, but needed a few more Romas to make a batch.  So, this morning we went to the West Seattle Farmers Market.  I bought some Romas, some Dill flower heads (for pickles later)  and some Rhubarb.

When we got home I started making the jam.  I peeled, chopped and cooked the tomatoes,  Then, along with some garlic and herbs, sugar and balsamic vinegar, cooked everything into jam. 

Then processed the half pint jars in a water bath.  Yield: 5

MAKING DAY

Today was a day for making things.

It started with a morning walk, of course.  But, we hurried home to get started on processing our tomatoes to make some ketchup.  Usually Darrell helps with this, by turning the crank on the food mill.  Since he was going to be out of town this week, we invested in an attachment for my Kitchenaid Stand Mixer that could do the job for me.  It worked great!

I've got the tomato sauce in the slow-cooker making ketchup.

I ran into a little problem when I realized that we didn't have any hot water.  You can't can tomato sauce without hot water.  I need hot water!  Here's another thing Darrell usually does.  Our water heater's pilot light tends to go out occasionally and he goes down and fixes it.  I didn't want to have anything to do with that, so I called a repair man.  He got here about 4:15pm and was done by 4:20pm and only charged me $115.29 to reconnect a wire that had somehow come loose.  I want to say it is almost worth it.  I can't live without hot water for very long.  I appreciate that they came out on the day I called.

Anyway, after I got half the tomatoes processed, I went up to the studio to work on Modern Fans.  

I got all of the rows sewed together into rows of twos.  It's coming out great.  I love it.  I've begun to think about how to quilt it.