If you keep up with my blog, then you know I have not had much success with tomatoes this year. This week my 10 tomato plants yielded just 4 pick-able specimens, none larger than 2 inches in circumference. I have finally taught my son not to rip every single baby green tomato from its stem, but now the squirrels and bunnies are having their way with the ones spared by little Kenny.

My friend Carly has had much better success. So we worked out a deal where she watched our 4 combined children while I canned her tomato bounty. Then we split the end result.

We chose the simplest recipe for tomatoes in the 'Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving' which is Crushed Tomatoes on page 357. I have skinned and prepped literally hundreds of cases of tomatoes for my former boss Tom Colicchio as he was going through an 'oven-roasted tomato' and 'tomato water/tomato consommé' phase when I worked for him in 2001. So skinning the tomatoes quickly was no problem for me, although this would probably be an immense pain in the patootie for some people. I then quickly crushed the tomatoes, added 2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice and 1 tsp kosher salt to each pint jar along with the hot crushed tomatoes, filled with 1/2 inch of headspace, and then canned as per instructed. The recipe calls for 1 Tbsp of bottled lemon juice and recommends against fresh lemon juice because it has variations in acidity. I simply cannot make myself use the bottled stuff. I mean have you ever tasted it? Ugh. So I figured doubling the recommended amount with freshly squeezed lemon juice should cover me acidity-wise.

The end product tastes great, but is watery. I will certainly use it for soups and stews, but not something I wanted to be thick in a relatively short amount of time. With minimal extra effort, I think next time around I'll seed the tomatoes and strain the flesh, making both a thicker crushed tomato product and bonus jars of strained 'tomato consommé', which is really just chef-speak for watery tomato juice. That watery tomato juice would be an excellent way to thin soups or stews with something flavorful, but lighter than a meat broth. It would also make for a lovely vegetarian soup base.

Long story short, I'll can your stuff for you if you babysit for me.