Canning Tomatoes

"You will listen to me because I am the princess!"

It was a beautiful morning, and I was able to convince the girls to go play outside.  They've been a little too attached to Netflix and playing the Wii lately, so this was a good thing.  In their play, Sophie was the princess who had "kindly" taken in her orphan cousin as her servant.  There seemed to be a lot of shoe-shining because the princess' shoes were "awfully filthy." 

Speaking of filthy, I hung quite a lot of laundry on the line this morning.  I think Sophie has worn 2-3 different outfits each day the last week or so.  Sheesh!

Lots of laundry out to dry

My goal for today was to can some diced tomatoes.  I had 18 or so good sized tomatoes that I figured would yield maybe 8 pints. I actually ended up with 15, which took me about two hours to prep before firing up the old pressure canner.

Funny-looking tomato with a "horn"

We ate lunch while the tomatoes were in the canner.  I used the 20 cherry tomatoes I had to make myself a caprese salad with fresh mozzarella, basil from the garden, and a little olive oil.  Doesn't it look good? 

Caprese salad

It also tasted good, especially with a toasted slice of homemade bread and a delicious peach for dessert.  After all that, my windowsill where I keep my tomatoes for ripening was all cleaned out!

Windowsill empty of tomatoes

Until I went back out to the garden, that is.

More tomatoes!

The girls and I also went to the library because we had books due today.  We've given ourselves the challenge of finding and reading as many books from their summer reading lists as we can.

Picking books at the library

When we got home it was still nice outside so we spread a blanket in the shade for a little reading time.  All cited this as the best part of the day when doing "favorites" at dinner time.

My spot was right in the middle