Monday Meals--Home Canned Tomato Soup!

Here's Tim and the girls looking for potatoes...amongst the weeds...the tops of the potato plants are dead, and it's difficult if not impossible to tell where a row is anymore. My garden got SOOO out of control with all the pumpkin and other viney plants, then the weeds came on and all hope of regaining control was gone...
These are the potatoes from our garden! 45 pounds of Taters! When it was time to plant the garden, I had some potatoes that were sprouting in the cupboard, so I cut the eyes off them and planted in them. Then we had some pretty bad potato bugs and I didn't think we'd get any Taters. Tim dug these up with the girls and didn't think it would take any time at all the collect the few measly spuds. Surprise! It took him and the girls all evening to dig them up!




These are all the tomatoes I collected while the rest of the family was digging up spuds.



My mom & I spent all last Wednesday canning tomatoes! We got 37 quarts of juice and what amounted to 15 quarts of tomato soup. The cooler weather that day had me dreaming of fall and all the soup that it brings! I love a good hearty chili! Or homemade Chicken Noodle Soup with {like} homemade noodles--the ones from the Amish store are pretty darn good! We doubled this recipe for Tomato Soup and did a lot of guessing on the quantity of ingredients we used--you can always put in less or more of these ingredients and it'll turn out just fine. I altered the original recipe to suit my tastes.

Tomato Soup

1 heaping peck of tomatoes {how much is a peck anyway? 2 gallons or 1/4 bushel}

Wash, cut off tops and bad spots, and quarter tomatoes. Cook down in appropriately sized pots under soft. Run through Kitchen Aid attachments to grind out seeds and such.

Blend up the following in blender or food chopper into fine pieces:

5 small onions

1 bunch celery

3 green peppers

2 red peppers

Place cooked tomatoes, ground up veggies and the following into large pot:

3 bay leaves

1/4 cup dried parsley

6-10 whole cloves

2 tbl canning salt

Boil on low for 2 hours (once boiling start timing). After 2 hours...in a separate mixing bowl, mix together 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup butter melted. It should be a thick paste. Gradually stir in 1 cup of soup at a time into mixing bowl until a thinner consistency forms. Now add this mixture to the soup kettle. You are now ready to can! Hot water bath for 30 minutes or pressure cook just until steam starts coming out. {the problem with canning with my mom is that I don't remember the particulars!} I know it wasn't long!

When I made this last year, it was quite strong, so I often added milk when preparing it for a meal. This time, it wasn't so strong, and didn't need any milk.