Tomato Soup & Grape Harvest

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Today: chopping tomatoes, simmering soup, picking a heavy bag full of delectably scented grapes for jelly. Tonight: canning soup. Tomorrow: making jelly, if nothing goes awry. Who can say? All I know is that my tomato-basil-grape-scented kitchen SMELLS AMAZING.

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Time for tomato soup!

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I’ve had a hankering for a tomato basil soup lately, and with all our tomatoes ripening like crazy, I decided to make enough to can. I’ve been picking and refrigerating them for three weekends, and now I think I have about a gallon – enough to use the recipe I found at pickyourown.org, a site I’ve found extremely useful over the past year. I can’t wait to taste it! I’ll admit to being a bit nervous, though. Tomatoes have to be pressure canned, and I haven’t used a pressure cooker for that purpose (I use it for water bathing jam and pickles) since I was in high school and closely supervised by my mother or an aunt. Sofie has been sleeping more dependably the last few nights, so I’ll do the canning part after the kids are in bed. Pressure canning takes a bit of focus, something I’m a bit short on at the best of times, and for safety I’d rather not have small people underfoot. This should be exciting!