Pizza Sauce & Favorite Canning jars

Here is the pizza sauce I canned the other night (I mean the other morning! LOL)

Again, I got this recipe from Tammy's Recipes. Here is the link to Tammy's Pizza Sauce.

I used her recipe for the seasonings, but I did go a little different route as far as the technique for making the sauce.

I just couldn't bring myself to drain the juice off the cooked tomatoes. That tomato juice is just so flavorful! I did some searching on the net, & most recipes for tomato sauce call for you to cook the juice down to a sauce instead of draining the juice. So that's what I did. It took forever, but I felt good about not draining the juice. :)

I have no idea how many pounds of tomatoes I had. Earlier in the day I had made the tomato soup, so this was the other half of the tomatoes that wouldn't fit in all the big pans I made soup in! I had my big 16 quart pan about half full of tomatoes, & my two 8 quart pans full.

1. Cook tomatoes with about 3 or 4 onions, diced; 5 or 6 cloves of garlic, minced; & 2 or 3 bell peppers, diced, for about an hour, or until everything is tender.

2. Run them through a colondar or food mill to remove seeds & skin.

3. Return to pans & season.

Season with:

1/2 cup white sugar

2 tablespoons salt

5 teaspoons oregano

2 teaspoons black pepper

2 teaspoons basil

You can adjust these measurements acording to how many tomatoes or how much juice you have. I had a lot, so I did add more.

4. Cook down 1/3 for a thinner sauce or cook down 1/2 for a thicker sauce.

5. Process in pint jars.

This took me a long time to get it to cook down, maybe a few hours! But it was so worth it! The house smelled wonderful too.

The next day, our 17 year old daughter wanted to dip her cheese stick into some of this sauce, so we opened our first jar. It was a big hit! :) And, for lunch that day I made some little tortilla pizzas with it. It was very good!

Thanks for another great recipe Tammy!

I also wanted to show you some of my favorite canning jars. In the picture above, that is a pint jar with a picture of a grandmother on it. I think it is so neat! It is a Mason pint jar.

And then here is a close up of some of my tomato soup jars. The one on the right is one of the older blue Ball jars. It's a wide mouth blue jar & it just seems so heavy & strong. I know the blue Ball jars are strong. The other day I was putting my half gallon blue Ball jars back up on top of my high cabinets when I realized it wasn't safe to use them for canning. I was STANGING on the counter & I DROPPED a half gallon blue Ball jar from up there. I knew it would shatter in 1000 pieces when it hit the floor. It BOUNCED! Can you believe that?!

That jar on the left of the blue Bell jar is one of my favorites. It has a square pattern all over it, like a grid. I have no idea who made it. It doesn't say Ball or Kerr or Longlife anywhere one it. I have had it for at least 20 years. Actually, there are 2 or 3 of them & I have no idea where I got them & who made them. They are just so different that I think they are really cool.

Here's where I dropped the half gallon blue Bell jar from! I'll never forget seeing that big glass jar BOUNCE!And here's a little pint jar that I like. I don't know if you can see it, but just like 90 percent of the stuff produced in 1976, it has the Liberty Bell on it & 1776-1976. LOL I am filling it with corriander seeds that I'm slooooowly harvesting off my dried cilantro plants.

I know I have other jars that are fun & different, but they are ALL put away. I actually had to go buy some NEW jars last weekend. I haven't bought new jars in ages. I'd so much rather find a big box of them at a garage sale rather than pay so much for brand new ones!

Thanks again, Tammy, for the Pizza Sauce recipe!