Spaghetti Sauce: Messiest Canning Day of the Year

    It's tomato season -- and that means spaghetti sauce. 

    Ont the day we can spaghetti sauce we forget about all other work and just focus on the canning. It's a tough, tough job -- but only because it's messy, hot and sticky.

    First we boil tomatoes, peppers and onions until they're soft. Then we put them through a strainer to get rid of as much juice as possible. We can the juice itself and in the winter we open,heat and drink it like V8 juice.
    Dad really likes it with pepper.

We try to keep the mess in the greenhouse as much as possible.

    The last thing we do before the sauce is caned is put it through a Victoria strainer to get rid of the seeds, peelings and anything else we don't want in the sauce. We set up the strainer in the greenhouse and just strain away.

   It spits and spurts and gets all over us -- like I said: Messy!

    Mom takes care of the last step.
    All it takes is a hot water bath to can up both the V8 juice and the sauce -- but you can use a pressure cooker too if you're more comfortable with that. It's a nice feeling when everything is all clean after spaghetti sauce and we've each had a nice long shower.