Roasted Garlic Tomato Soup! SBS (Step By Step)

Here is my way of doing Roasted Garlic Tomato Soup. I peel my tomatoes first makes it easier in my opinion. I cut an X in the bottom of a Tomato.

I blanch them for a min or so until the skins are starting to come off.

Then I dump them in the sink of cold water to cool immediately. Then the skins peel right off. Core and half the tomatoes as much as will fit into your pans. Roast Garlic, Tomatoes, 2 Carrots peeled and chopped at about 1". 1 large onion peeled and quartered 1 garlic head. Brush all with olive oil. I also drizzle olive oil over garlic head. Roast in oven at 400 degrees for about an hour, until slightly black. This picture below I was doing a double batch. I had 4 9x13 pans going. The one below had all my onions and garlic and carrots on it. I snuck a few tomatoes on so you could see. The rest of my pans had all tomatoes

Put all in a large pot.

Then add your 2 cans of chicken broth to your pot. Boil for 10 min. I then used my immersion blender to make it super creamy.

Process in pint jars with 10 lbs pressure for 60 min using a pressure canner only.

To serve add cream or milk when heating to your liking. Do not add cream or milk before canning it will spoil. Let me know if anyone tries it and what they think. Enjoy!

Dill Pickles YUMMY!

Here is my Dill pickles. They did turn out great.

I pick my pickles pretty small, a few snuck by me and got a little big.

Here is the recipe: for each jar

1/8 tsp. granulated alum

1 clove of garlic

1 small hot pepper

2 heads of fresh dill

20-25 - 4 inch cukes, blossom removed, washed and soaked overnight with 1/3 C pickling or canning salt. Rinse and drain cukes and pat dry, stuff into quart jars.

for the Brine:

1 C pickling salt

12 C water

4 C vinegar

Bring to a boil.

Pour over packed Cukes. with 1/2" head space. Process 10 min in Boil Water Bath. BWB.

Let them sit a month before you eat. If you can wait that long. Happy Eating!

Squash, Peppers, & Tomatoes oh MY

just a quick post tonight. Look at all my Peppers! Yum... I want to make some Jalapeno Poppers! I never made any and want to give them a whirl. Hopefully I can make them and freeze them. Perfect for Packer Games. See the bucket of Cherry tomatoes that is how many we pick at time. Crazy..... I plan on canning and cooking tomorrow. I will let you know what I make.

Butternut squash I have a total of 4. One seems to weigh about 5 lbs. 2 more cantaloupe too!

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

How I couldn't wait for tomatoes. Well they are here in full force. We have great tomatoes in the Midwest this year. Every person I talk to has good tomatoes. No dry rot or bugs getting to them. I have been dehydrating the cherry tomatoes like crazy by cutting them in half, sprinkling with sea salt and oregano and basil. Then dehydrate and put them in freezer bags in the freezer. They are great to pop into soups and sauces to give it more of a tomato flavor. The kids think they taste like pizza sauce. I have almost 5 quart bags full.

My hubby wanted me to try to make some tomato soup to can as well. I made some today. I got 4 pints and it smelt wonderful cooking. Here is the recipe:

Roasted Garlic Tomato Soup

12 Tomatoes
2 Carrots - cut in 1" pieces
1 Large Onion -  quartered
2 whole heads of garlic-
Olive Oil
2 cups Chicken Broth- (or 3)
1/2 C chopped fresh basil or 1 T dried

Core tomatoes and cut in half. Place cut side up on foil covered cookie sheets with carrots, onion and garlic. brush with Olive Oil.  Bake at 400F for about an hour, or until vegies are roasted and a little blackened. Place in a large sauce pan with the chicken broth and basil and simmer for about 10 min. Blend with a stick blender until almost smooth.

To Can: Process in a pressure canner at 10 lbs pressure  60 min for pints and 70 min for quarts. 1" head space.

**cream may be added to taste when the soup is served**

Makes 1-1/2 to 2 quarts or around 4 pints

(i used 2  9x13 pans to roast my veggies or I would have had a mess from the tomatoes.)

enjoy!!

(recipe courtsey of gardenweb.com, recipe by Katie posted by Joannaw)

I plan on making a bigger batch soon!!! 

I'm Baaaack

Whew!!!! I am back to blogging... Yea... I have been out for about 3 weeks due to our computer malfunctioning.  I have a Mac (iMac G5) and it seemed to be acting a bit funny for about a month or so. I never performed any back up whatsoever, so when it was acting funny I started thinking hmmm, maybe I should make sure my stuff is "safe"incase anything my happen to my Mac.  My Brother Matt the wonderful techie that he is told me to get an external hard drive and back up my files. I thought ok, just like everything I'll get to Best Buy and get one and put that on my never ending "to do" list.  WELLL... you can almost feel what is coming. My hard drive blew out before I had a chance to back it up. There was some sensor in the fan that cools the HD that malfunctioned and it wasn't cooling and that is why it was acting funny. The fan would run really loud even after we checked email. I did think that was weird but then again I thought it was just doing it's job. After all our Mac is from 2005.  Well I took it in to a computer shop and it took them 2 weeks to get to it and then they couldn't recover any of my data. I am crushed. I had tons of photos of family, my hubby's taxidermy work and just documents, email addresses, basically our life was in there.  Funny only about 4 years ago it really wouldn't have mattered too much. We rely on on our wireless gadgets and non-wireless gadgets so much. How do you pay a  bill or talk to a friend without Internet or email.  Use the  postal service or use a gasp... PHONE.  It was a nice break for a couple of weeks actually to put it all back into perspective. I went for a walk in the evening with the family, instead of updating my blog or working online doing scrapbooking things. I found more time, now I need to make more time and not be glued to the computer. Don't get me wrong I am back but I will not rely on this as much since the betrayal of my trust. I will print my photos more often and back up my documents and most of all make sure I have stamps on hand... Just in case.  ha ha

ps. I put up 15 canned pints of pasta sauce on Friday from the TONS of tomatoes I am getting out of the garden. They are just beautiful. I will post pictures soon of my little red treasures.

 

Back to School and a bit of Everything

Here is one more layout I did from Emillies First Birthday. I used SCAL and my Cricut for the font.

I got my first Cantaloupe and squash out of the garden. I can't wait to eat the Cantaloupe. We had some more Sweet Corn for supper on Sunday night too. It was great.

First day of school. Emillie is in 3rd grade and Lucas is in 2nd. Nick just wanted to be in the photo. Can't believe it was 39 degrees Monday morning. Yikes!! Gardening season is almost over.