Tomatoes!

I picked up 1/2 a bushel or whatever the metric equivalent is of plum tomatoes at the market yesterday so my day was pretty much consumed with finding delicious ways to use them.  My main goal was to make some tomato sauce for the freezer.  In other years the plants in my garden have provided me with enough tomatoes to make a couple of batches.  But this year my plants didn't produce enough for sauce.

Also, I have stumbled upon this blog recently and found a good sounding recipe for tomato jam on the site which sounded good - and it is.  Very spicy - in the flavourful as opposed to hot sense.  Lots of ginger, cinnamon and cloves.  We had some of the extra on homemade bulgur wholewheat rolls that I also whipped up and a taste with the lamb for dinner.  Very, very good.

Even with a huge pot of sauce and 5 pounds going into the jam, I still had quite a few tomatoes left over so decided salsa sounded like a good idea too.  The salsa had the added benefit of using a couple of the hot peppers and basil from the garden.  The basil is plentiful and starting to flower so needed to be used.  The salsa is a bit on the sweet side - these hot peppers aren't very hot - but very tasty.

This morning, because all the canning gear is still in the kitchen and because I can't resist buying more than my body weight in peaches, I made peach jam.  Just my standard of peaches, sugar and lemon juice and boiling the heck out of it essentially.  But I found a recipe that had lavender in the peach jam so threw in a couple of pinches to see what it tastes like.

I do have to pick up some labels so when I go to eat it in February I don't think there are bugs in the jam.  And look at that 3/4 full jar at the back just waiting for my toast tomorrow morning!