Harvesting from my garden is one of my favourite times of the year. Not only can I avoid the grocery store, but also enjoying a meal with produce grown by myself is a great feeling. When I started having an abundance of tomatoes, it could only mean one thing: salsa!

This year was my first attempt at making salsa, both fresh and for canning. My first year having a garden, my tomato harvest was unsuccessful. Not a single tomato turned red. To this day, I am still not sure what I learned from last year to make this year a better harvest.

My first learnt lesson is I should not can fresh salsa. Not great news as I really enjoy my recipe for fresh salsa. Naturally, I made a couple jars to enjoy within the next couple of weeks.

Second learnt lesson is no matter how much research I do, I should never start a project without ensuring the canner is in the house. I already owned a canner, but did not own enough jars or the jar lifter. I picked up these last minute items, picked my tomatoes, onions, jalapenos and green peppers. Then went to grab my canner and I could not find it anywhere! I had not used my canner in a few years, before my move. I later discovered that the canner was at my parent’s place an hour away. This changed all my plans.

Third learnt lesson is that it is ok to change plans because I discovered some great recipes. Without a canner, my only other option was to make something that I could freeze. Now I have a new marinara recipe. The recipe I followed said it was mandatory to peel the tomatoes. Not wanting to waste, I learned about making tomato powder, which is now one of my favourite things to make from tomatoes. Shout out to this website for the inspiration and recipe: How to Make Tomato Powder From Scratch (food52.com). I used the oven method to dehydrate the tomato skins.

I successfully made fresh salsa, marinara and tomato powder and still had three large bowls of ripe tomatoes. A couple days later, my mom dropped off my canner. I followed this amazing recipe with a couple less teaspoons of salt: The BEST Homemade Salsa for Canning (delishknowledge.com). It turned out so well.

I now have 23 sealed jars ready to enjoy throughout the winter!

With calmness and grace,

Hannah