Winter Is Coming! Can Tomatoes To Keep You Warm -- Even The Ones On Sale At Larriland

Canned tomato sauce with Larriland tomatoes

If you have ever thought about canning, think about picking tomatoes and firing up some pots in the next several weeks.

Winter is coming.  Supermarket tomatoes will become hard, flavorless and have glowing blue eyes.

You can can up some tomatoes -- along with pickles and other vegetables.  I encouraged canning before -- and canning cookbooks.  It's a fun project, and the canned tomatoes are a treat as they pour summer into a mid-winter pasta sauce or pizza.

Today, Larriland Farm in Woodbine even has a sale on tomatoes.  I've never heard of this before.  The full-price tomatoes are spectacular and reason enough to pick at Larriland, then go home to can.  That's what I did with early season plum tomatoes over the summer.  But Larriland has announced a sale on one of its tomato fields.  (You can also get chard, blackberries, apples and more.)

If you can't go today, Larriland says tomato season runs into early October.  Pick another day.  This is a spectacular season to visit as apples and vegetables run into the pumpkins, hay rides and Halloween activities next month.  For more information about Howard County farms, my favorite source is AnnieRie's blog where she writes about harvests and products beings sold.  Check out her posts about farms, including local chickens for sale at England Acres.

Seriously, tomato sauce is a terrific first project.  You can find all kinds of recipes on the Web or in cookbooks.  Basically, you cook down tomatoes with onions and herbs or spices.  Then, you boil sealed jars to sterilize the sauce and seal up the Mason jars.  I really suggest it.  

I also suggest the amusement of early-morning tomato picking.  In mid-afternoon, Larriland fields are full of kids and people chatting.  But we hit up the tomato fields when they opened on a Saturday morning.  Serious pickers.  All adults.  Some who looked like they were going to re-sell at a market.  And everyone seriously pulling red tomatoes off the vines.  We were giggling about how everyone seemed so serious, and we picked probably twice what we needed.  It was peer pressure.  

For basic canning supplies, check out my 2011 post or look in Kendall Hardware in Clarksville or your local grocery store.

Cookbooks For Next Summer: Flip Now To See If You Want To Pickle Or Can The Best Of 2013

Cukes, hot peppers and snow peas ready to be pickled last summer

Think now about the upcoming spring, and start to make a few plans if you want to play with canning.

Over the past two years, I have dabbled a bit in preserving vegetables.  Some spectacular tomato sauce and pickled beets.  Some good salsas, a tomato relish, and yellow tomato jam.  Still learning how to pickle cucumbers successfully.  All in all, I have poured a lot of vinegar, and it has been mid-winter fun to pour the flavor of summertime out of a jar.

The real point of canning is to grab a whole lot of something when it's cheap or when you have time to cook.  Then you preserve that flavor in glass jars for the rushed nights when opening a can feels like a victory.

For my ingredients, I have gone two ways.  The romantic is Larriland Farm in Woodbine, where I have picked blueberries, tomatoes and beets on the volume discount.  The practical is the Asian groceries stores like Lotte or H Mart in Catonsville.  Beets, snow peas, cucumbers and more are seasonably cheap, and I buy a bunch to put some away.

Either way, it's a fun project for anyone who likes to cook -- but maybe bursts of cooking rather than steady time every week.  It's great fun to put away salsa or jelly or relish and then be able to create a weeknight meal with the twist of a wrist.  Simple tomato sauce is a revelation in January.  It's like covering pasta with the taste of August.  Grate some cheese, and it's so much better than a jar of commercial sauce.

Blueberries And Beets At Larriland

Blueberries from Larriland

Our Larriland Farm season started a month earlier this year when we actually got there for blueberries.

Out in the fields

Often, we arrive in peach season.  But we got a canning book on Saturday, so we went out Sunday afternoon to pick some things to preserve.  First, we went to the blueberry fields.  Remember our lesson: Walk to the far part of the field.  We slogged a long time on plants that other people had been picking all week.

I had to laugh when we finally go to the far end and found plans with more than three or four ripe berries.  At th far end, you could just stand and pull handfuls.  By the end, we had 10 pounds of fruit.  I canned some.  I hope those will become a base for drinks and ice cream sauce.  We'll freeze the rest and make sorbet over time.

Larriland is spectacular.  If you haven't been, you need to plan on blueberries now, tomatoes, peaches, and blackberries in the summer heat, then apples and pumpkins in the fall.  The fruit just tastes better.  I have been popping handfuls of blueberries, and they're absolutely perfect.

Honey sticks!

And that's not even taking in the beets.  Beets are the easiest pick-your-own field.  Just pull them out of the ground.  We got 20 pounds in minutes, and I roasted them all.  I turned some into pickles.  I need plans for the rest.

Larriland is a great activity with kids.  It's a project for a serious picker who wants to cook or can.  Don't miss their expanded barn where they sell already-picked produce and some other treats.  We always get dried fruit candy for the ride home.  We also bought McCutcheon's sodas -- black cherry and sarsaparilla -- and some of the honey sticks.

The vegetables are still a deal, but beets were more than we paid last fall.  It was 99 cents a pound if you buy 20 pounds.  That was 79 cents last fall.  Remember the beet rule: Bring a knife to slice the stems.  Keep the greens that you'll saute with garlic and dress with a little oil and vinegar.

If you want to try Larriland, remember that you can get food for a picnic out there.  Harvest Fried Chicken is just north of U.S. 70.  Town Grille in Lisbon sells barbecue almost between U.S. 70 and the farm.

If you want to try to can, I recommend buying a canning pot from Amazon.  Ball sells jars all over the place, including Kendall Hardware in Clarksville.  But the price of the big pots makes that a deal.

For Canning Supplies, Check Out Kendall Hardware in Clarksville

I'm still not sure if I'm any good at canning, but I certainly know now that Kendall Hardware is the place to go for supplies.

I have a shelf of items that I put away in a recent mania brought about by cheap tomatoes and a dread of winter.  But it is a strange experience because I have no idea if anything tastes good at all.  I saved a little tomato and basil jam in a plastic container, but all the pickles, sauce and roasted tomatoes are set aside for winter use.

To date, my real discovery has been that Kendall Hardware in Clarksville is the local place to outfit yourself if you're an old hand or on a new jag like me.  Target, Larriland Farm and some supermarkets had a few items.  But only Kendall had a half-aisle of Ball jars -- everything from quart to half-pint and an array of wide and regular mouths.  Great selection.  Good prices too.

Personally, I'm going with small jars.  I see myself canning a few quarts of sauce.  But mostly, I'm looking to cook small batches of pickles and other ingredients that I can set aside in eight- and 12-ounce jars and break open when I need good food in little time.  So I loved the jelly jars and the wide-mouth half-pints.  They also sell the tools - like a jar lifter, a funnel, etc. -- in both Ball brand and some cheaper, generic options.

Right now, the Kendall folks have a special display of Ball jars in the middle of the store.  They said they're a year-round product.  If they don't have what you need, they can order special.

I still need to buy the giant pot that people use to process their jars.  I'm planning to buy one from Amazon because I just need the pot.  Ball seems to sell a package with a canner and a bunch of supplies, but the price seems inflated.  Better to buy the canner on Amazon and all the other supplies at Kendall Hardware.

(Update: I bought the Columbian Home 33-Quart Jar canner from Amazon.  Seemed large and not that expensive.)

You Say Tornado? I Say Tomato. Learning To Can Tomato Sauce As Irene Blew Into Town

The nut calling Harris Teeter during the state of emergency to ask whether they sell Ball canning jars?  That was me.  So sorry.  I just used the quart ones that I already owned.

Gorman Produce Farm had $25 boxes of tomatoes when I picked up the CSA on Thursday.  Maybe 28-30 pounds of tomatoes.  A second chance at learning to make tomato sauce after Larriland had been picked clean of the regular size on our visit earlier this month.

So I grabbed the box.  Then I panicked Friday night when I realized the storm could leave me with no power and rotting tomatoes.  It was a race to preserve.
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