It’s that time of year again, when I miss an early morning swim in order to do an early morning shop. Some people rush out for the Boxing Day sales or for Black Friday, but not me. All I’m interested in is fruit season, when I can fill the car with boxes of produce and spend the following few days preserving it for the long winter months.
So, last Friday saw me off to Newcastle Emlyn at 7am to see what was available. It’s always hard knowing what to buy. You can’t plan ahead, because if you do I can guarantee that they won’t have the thing you want, but I was on the lookout for tomatoes, peaches, pineapples and peppers. What I came home with was tomatoes, peaches (two types) and apricots, as well as some potatoes and other vegetables for ‘normal’ cooking. And as a result, my kitchen looked like this on Friday:
just waiting
So far, I have processed all of the tomatoes into oven-roasted passata (half-litre and quarter-litre jars)
and I’m making good progress with the apricots and peaches, plus we’ve eaten lots of them fresh and I’ve rotated my stock in Tim’s cupboard, so there’s a shelf ready to fill
I won’t share a picture of the slightly frazzled chef!
-oOo-
I love cooking with homemade passata; roasting the tomatoes adds a depth of flavour that you simply don’t get with tinned tomatoes, or even fresh ones. However, I also spend time doing this every year in order to avoid waste. As you can see from the pictures, the tomatoes come in cardboard boxes (which we burn or compost, depending on our current needs) and the jars are reused year after year, with the central disc of the lids being replaced when they stop sealing efficiently (they last several uses, although the manufacturers tell you to use them only once). This means that we minimise packaging and also avoid any potential problems with BPA leaching from the plastic coating inside tin cans (yes, metal cans also contain plastic)*.
Anyway, so far, so successful… I wonder what my next early morning shopping trip will yield.
-oOo-
*If you want to know a bit more about the issues associated with cans contaminating tomatoes, this seems to be a balanced article on the subject.
The Snail of Happiness 
ourrubbishblog
/ June 26, 2018Reading this makes me hungry now. Is it simply a case of halving the tomatoes and then put them in oven or do you peel the them first before they go in or sort the skin our at the end when they are cooked?
I don’t like tomatoes in their normal being but we do eat chopped etc. Would love to be able to just conserve a lot in one go to avoid the tinned variety.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 26, 2018Halve the tomatoes, put in a roasting dish, sprinkle with a little oil and then roast until they are not too wet. After this, I put mine through a passata mill (the red gadget in the photo) which separates pulp from seeds and skin, but you could sieve them or just whiz them in a blender.
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ourrubbishblog
/ July 4, 2018Thanks, we tried it out on the weekend. Didn’t think it was this easy (was too good to be true). Two happy tummies and one happy freezer!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ July 4, 2018yay!
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Ann Pole
/ June 26, 2018I’m impressed. 🙂
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katechiconi
/ June 26, 2018I do like seeing all that evidence of industry 🙂 Not only is it fresh, healthy, waste-free and delicious, it’s also very decorative!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 26, 2018I am particularly pleased with the apricots – the colour is just gorgeous.
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nikkibnb
/ June 26, 2018Wow that looks amazing. I definitely need to look into preserving in jars more. We do pickles and jams but haven’t jarred sauces yet.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 26, 2018I’m not a great eater of jams, but bottled fruit is a staple throughout the year and the passata is so much more yummy than any I have ever bought.
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nikkibnb
/ June 26, 2018Oh yes it definitely is! We made passata before but we froze it in portions which was quite useful 🙂
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 26, 2018I used to freeze it, but I’d need an enormous freezer to store the amount I make now; plus, once it’s in bottles, storage requires no further energy… and no defrosting (very useful for a super-quick pasta dish!)
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Laurie Graves
/ June 26, 2018Tomatoes and peaches already! You are so far ahead of Maine. We won’t have them until August.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 26, 2018The peaches come from further south, but the tomatoes are British… mind you, we are having remarkably good weather this summer, which I think accounts for the tomatoes being available now.
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Laurie Graves
/ June 27, 2018I am envious.
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Jeanne
/ June 26, 2018I just love this – beautiful and fabulous to use throughout the year…an inspiration to be sure. Thanks!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 26, 2018I love the look of them when they are all lined up… this year, though the colours seem particularly vibrant.
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wybrow1966
/ June 26, 2018So organised – and what wonderful pressies they would make in the midst of winter!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 26, 2018I don’t often give them away as I’m possessive about my jars… I do, however, often invite people round to share the bounty.
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thecontentedcrafter
/ June 26, 2018I do love to see your work at this time of the year! I remember the satisfaction I would see as I admired all my jars lined up in colourful rows in the pantry….. I didn’t know that you can reuse the seals, always threw mine out after one use. What a waste! 🙂 The things we learn! I do buy passata, but it is a) organic and b) in glass jars. Happy preserving!!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 26, 2018We have a local organic farm where they make passata from their own tomatoes and I used to buy from them, sometimes they have surplus tomatoes and I buy those, but it’s a bit hit and miss and always at the end of the season, so I can’t rely on them, It’s quite a lot of work for the few days that I’m bottling, but it’s so worth it in the depths of winter to get a flavour of summer. This year it’s so sunny that our solar panels are supplying all the electricity needed for the cooking too, so I’m feeling even more environmentally virtuous.
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thecontentedcrafter
/ June 26, 2018Virtuous and Happy! 🙂
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anne54
/ June 27, 2018I worked with a woman from an Italian family, and once a year they would have a big bottling session too. I remember her telling me about the huge saucepans they would put over a fire. I wonder now if that was to cook the tomatoes or boil water to sterilise the jars. You are part of a grand tradition. It must be so satisfying to see the produce organised in your cupboards, ready for the winter.
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nanacathy2
/ June 27, 2018I love the photos you share of the boxes of produce at this time of year!
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Wild Daffodil
/ June 28, 2018Wonderful!
I didn’t know cans had plastic too – oh no!
How can we humans have let it go this far. I have a vision of us wiping ourselves in about 500 years time, with us becoming extinct like dinosaurs and whichever species then evolves, in a few more thousand years time, will be sifting through mountains of plastic trying to work us out
Thanks for giving me hope that there will be enough pioneer environmentalists like you to tip the balance in the right direction. On that cheery thought – back to crochet!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 28, 2018I think it’s the hidden plastic that is the most difficult to address… it’s relatively easy to say no to a plastic carrier bag, but incredibly hard to cut out something you don’t know you are using!
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Wild Daffodil
/ June 28, 2018Yes indeed.
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Kim
/ June 30, 2018I’m deeply envious of your productivity. It must be wonderful opening one of the jars in the depths of winter. I really need to look into this – we have a great market in Birmingham so sourcing produce wouldn’t be difficult.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ July 1, 2018I built up to it slowly – just a few jars of apples in the autumn when I realised I didn’t have enough freezer space, but now there are some things that I simply don’t freeze because the bottling is so effective. It means that I eat some fruit every day for my breakfast because there’s always a jar to open 🙂 and I haven’t bought a tin of tomatoes for several years now.
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AJ
/ June 30, 2018I used to can every summer and loved enjoying the fruits of my layouts in the winter:)
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The Snail of Happiness
/ July 1, 2018It’s hard work, but really worthwhile and I love that it eliminates so much packaging.
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AJ
/ July 1, 2018I just loved that it always tastes so much better than store-bought stuff!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ July 2, 2018That too!
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insearchofitall
/ July 21, 2018Oh my!! Wow!
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Nikki
/ August 9, 2018Absolutely wonderful! I’ve only managed to make a few fruit jams this year due to the unexpected heat: we would never finish the fruit before they went past their best! Love your batch bottling.
I wonder if glass jars with a rubber seal would be a better alternative, going forward? Easily re-washed & used repeatedly until the rubber finally fails..? Or do they too contain hidden plastic?!
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