When I was a kid, my grandmother used to make tomato ketchup and I never really understood why it was called ketchup when it wasn’t anything like what I had with my fries.  In the past, Scott and I have tried to make some and failed miserably.  This summer, with more tomatoes than I can could possible use, we decided to try again.  I found a recipe on a website I use all of the time, but it didn’t quite suit us.  For one, it said to run the stuff through the blender.  After making a batch that way, I realized why what my grandmother had made was called ketchup.  Those were the ingredients and the blending created what you put on your fries.

After that, I decided I didn’t want mine done that way.  I wanted to have good, old fashioned ketchup or what I prefer to think of as relish.  So I stopped blending it.  And I made a couple more minor adjustments to the recipe as well.  So I’m putting it here for safe-keeping because I’m sure this is one we’ll use over and over again.

Ingredients

12 pounds of tomatoes – blanched, peeled, chopped

1 pound onions

1/2 pound red (or yellow) bell peppers

1/2 pound green bell pepper (or banana peppers.  Hey, I use what I’ve got)

2 cups apple cider vinegar

4 cups of sugar

2 tablespoons salt (in the last batch, I left the salt out completely because we try to stay low sodium)

Spices

1 tablespoon dry mustard

1/2 tablespoon ground red pepper (I use a tad less than that)

1/2 tablespoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon allspice

Directions

You can do this part however you want, but this is what works for me, and creates that old fashioned taste I wanted but cuts back on cooking time.  Place the chopped tomatoes into a big pot and heat them to a boil.  Then, drain off the juice into another pan.  You can take the juice, strain it, then cook it a bit to give yourself a little tomato juice. I usually get around a quart.  Return your tomatoes to the pot and add the peppers, onions, vinegar, sugar, and spices.  You can cook that on low until it gets to the consistency you’d like or you can put it in the crockpot and cook it on low there.  We’ve just been using our big pot we got for such projects.

When you’re done, put it into sterile pint jars.  I get 4-5 depending on how thick I let it get.  Process them in a waterbath for about 20 minutes.

It’s wonderful on homestyle hashbrowns, eggs, peas, sandwiches.

Now, before we start, let me explain something.  I made this recipe the first time without some of the ingredients (I’m not telling you which ones but you can probably guess.) and the kids didn’t care much for it.  In fact, they said it wasn’t right.  So I added a couple of things to it and they’ve loved it ever since.  So I’m just going to put the recipe down the way I make it.  I’m going to figure that anyone who reads this knows how to scald tomatoes to take the peel off, so I’m not going into that.

Ingredients

5 pounds ripe tomatoes (approximately 8 cups)

3 cups chopped onions

1 cup seeded and chopped chili peppers (We use jalapeno.)

1/2 cup green peppers (I’ve used banana pepper instead.)

1 cup cider vinegar (labeled 5% acidity)

3 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 can tomato paste

1 can large can tomato sauce

Directions

After peeling, core and chop tomatoes.  In a 6 to 8 quart saucepan, combine all ingredients.  Bring to a boil, stirring often.  Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes or to desired thickness.  I cook mine down quite a bit because we like a thicker salsa.  Immediately fill hot pint jars with salsa, leaving 1/2-inch headspace.  Carefully run a nonmetallic down inside of jar to remove trapped air bubbles.  Wipe jar tops and threads clean.  Place hot lids on jars and screw bands on firmly.  Process in Boiling water canner for 15 minutes.

It’s supposed to give you 6 pints but that may vary if you cook it down as much as I do.  Stores well and is very pretty in the jar.

Ended up having to water the garden yesterday.  Corn was stressing which is never good.  Looks better today and I think we might have even sparked the pumpkins’ interest in coming out of their seeds.  Last round of potatoes are popping except for the ones the voles ate.  When  I see some life out of my last big run of onions, all of the others are coming out.  Ready to continue with my garden clean out.   Cucumbers are history this weekend because they’ve been so useless.

Donovan went out with us to move the sprinkler the last time and he really had fun getting stuff from the garden.  He picked corn, green beans, peppers and onions.  Even some blackberries.  He’s really learning alot about what’s what, which is great.  I’m glad he’s excited about the process.  It’s just too cute to watch him walk around with his basket, filling it up.  I know, I should have gotten pictures, but I didn’t think about it until we were almost finished.

And on the canning note…Made cherry tomato pickles the other day and was so confident, I didn’t read all of the recipe, so I forgot about doing the brine solution instead of just straight vinegar.  Nasty things.  Still makes me shudder.  So I lost  3 pints of pickles, but luckily there are so many cherry tomatoes, I’ll never notice.  Mixed up my brine, used part of it on the batch I did yesterday, then stored the rest in quart jars.  Good for those times when we need a couple of jars as fillers in the canner in order to use a little less water on partial batches.

Today, it’s a repair job on a batch of salsa Scott wanted me to try and no one would eat.  Back to my old recipe, part out of a book, part my own creation.  I’ll have to put it on here later.  It’s what the kids expect when they eat salsa I make.  And apparently, from what Zak tells me, other people who have eaten it like it, too.  Maybe I should just start making and selling applesauce and salsa…..naaaaa….teaching’s easier.

So here’s the story for this one.  The first year I gardened, I was stupid and planted 8 cherry tomato plants.  Before long, I had a ridiculous number of cherry tomatoes.  I froze some of them, but that was an absolute waste of time because had to deal with the skins and they were nasty.  And peeling those little things?  Forget it.

I started looking for something to do with them and ran across the idea of picking them green and pickling them.  What did I have to lose?  So I tried it.  While the kids still make terrible faces at the thought of it, Scott and I really enjoy them.  And when he takes them up north, they’re a big hit.  Now I grow too many cherries every year just to make pickles with. It’s super easy and a neat thing to do with all of those little monsters.  Read somewhere that people use them in their martinis instead of olives.  Since I don’t drink martinis, I couldn’t tell you if it’s good.  But might be worth a try.

Posting the link to the recipe at the bottom as well.  I don’t change this recipe much, except for two things I leave out and one thing we’ve been known to put in.  Okay, so I change it more than I think I do.  Cooks are like artists, so we should have that privilege.

Ingredients

Cherry green tomatoes

Garlic

Celery – We don’t use this any more.  Don’t like the taste and can’t tell it does much to change the tomatoes.

Onion

Dill

Green pepper – Don’t always put green pepper, but have been known to throw in a hot pepper.  Makes them hot, in case you couldn’t guess.

Directions

Put small green tomatoes in jar. To each pint add 1 clove garlic, 1 stalk celery, 1 small onion, 1 head of dill, some green pepper. Boil together: 2 quarts water, 1 quart vinegar, 3/4 cup salt (scant). Boil 5 minutes with cover on.

Pour into jars and put in hot bath. Just bring to a boil and turn off heat and let jars stand in the hot bath until cold.

To go to the original recipe, click here.

Scott sprayed the grass and weeds last night.  Making note so we don’t forget when it was done.  I’m hoping he didn’t kill things that weren’t supposed to die.  We discussed that last night, but he doesn’t listen very well.

Tiny little eggplant out in the garden.  Very cute!  There are a couple of white ones and a purple one.  Picked banana peppers last night, which reminds me to add that to the table.  Almost forgot.

And, last but not least, made Chocolate Mint jelly and some Black Cherry Syrup.  Scott says the syrup’s too thin, but the kids like it in their water.  Takes about 3 tablespoons.  Actually pretty good.  Would be better in 7up, but I gave those up a long time ago.  I’m thinking club soda, though.  That might be worth a try.

Oooh, and I took the mint left over after making jelly and did a little herbal mint tea.  Excellent way to cool off.

I want to get a list together of what’s in the basement so I can figure out what I need and don’t need. Starred are things I’m running low on.

Flavors I know I’ve got:

Blueberry *

Blackberry Jam*

Blackberry Syrup

Cherry Jam

Cherry Syrup*

Grape Jam

Grape  Jelly

Pear Jam

Pear Jelly

Peach Jam

Raspberry

Cranberry

Apple *

Persimmon

Spearmint *

Chocolate Mint *

Strawberry

Mixed  berry

Lemon

Hot Pepper

Apple Butter

I think that’s it.  I know that I’ll need to make more Chocolate Mint, partly because I’m about out.  Grapes will be in later and I’ll want a batch then.  Almost out of Apple, but tons of Persimmon.  Pears I’ll can this year.  I’m thinking I need to make a table to keep this straight.  Hmmmm….

So for now, I need to go ahead and make the Chocolate Mint and Mixed Berry.  And I definitely want more Peach Jam when I can find peaches at a decent price.

And find someone to help eat what we’ve got.  That’ll be tough.

Now, this one is not my favorite.  In fact, I tasted it and that’s all I’ve done.  My mother likes it.  Scott and Elaina both eat it.  But it’s not something I want to mess with.  Still, I’m going to list it so I don’t lose it.

This is another recipe that Scott had on a message board.

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I made mint jelly for the first time years ago when we lived in town.  I had more mint than I knew what to do with, so this made sense.  I’d seen it in the stores.  We loved it.  So when we moved out here, it seemed like worth a try.  We have plain mint as well as spearmint and chocolate mint.  All make a nice jelly.  You can use mint on lamb, but we use it on toast.  Donovan likes it on his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

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We have persimmon tree in the back yard that seems determined to drop tons of persimmons on us every year.  We’ve come up with a recipe that works well.  Our persimmons are sweet, never tart like alot of others.  It’s an American Persimmon.  We’ve tried making persimmon perserves, but that was absolutely nasty.  Won’t do that again.  This works well.

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Mixed Berry Jam
Fills about 11 8 oz jelly jars

To make jam:
5 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen- thaw first)
5 cups blackberries (fresh or frozen- thaw first)
1/8 cup lemon juice
½ cup water
1 box pectin
7 cups sugar

Place blueberries, blackberries, lemon juice, and water in large pot. Mash thoroughly, or if available, run through a Squeezo or juicer. This may change your yield just a bit, but keeps you from having to deal with the blackberry seeds which we’re not terribly fond of. Add pectin. Bring to boil that cannot be stirred away. Add sugar and bring to a second boil. Boil 1-2 minutes. Ladle into clean jars and seal.