So Shannon went to Utah to help Mom out post hip replacement. (This was during the first week of school.) While she was there she found out that this food rescue place just got in an unexpected shipment of organic on the vine tomatoes. $11 for 66lbs. HELLO! So I went and got some. Unfortunately it was one order per household. However when Shannon got back into town they still had some so she ran over and got an order. At that point they were REALLY wanting to unload them before they all rotted, and asked Shannon if she wanted two orders. She almost got two orders, but then thought better of it.

So between the two orders and what she brought back with her from the garden (Jon's Dad has an AMAZING garden!) we were swimming in tomatoes. And if we didn't have to worry about taking and picking up kids from school we would have been done much faster, and probably would have grabbed that third order. Because we are completely crazy like that!

 

I didn't want the tomatoes I picked up on Saturday morning to spoil any faster than they already were, so I took out some shelving from the bevi fridge and crammed them in to wait for Monday and Shannon.

 

Every single tomato had a sticker. EVERY.SINGLE.ONE! I found this annoying and excessive. I kept reminding myself of the sweet deal we got on them as I de-stickered and de-vined them for washing,

 

 

 

This is a picture of most of the tomatoes washed and ready to go. I lined the boxes with paper towels and stacked them up to conserve space in my little kitchen.

 

This is where we lived for the next several days between kids and school. For the several hundreds of tomatoes we had we only tossed around 20 due to rot. I was thrilled with how well the organic tomatoes held up.

 

Our treasures from Utah. This whole tomato/Utah garden deal softened the blow of our garden failure this year.

 

  

We processed 28 quarts of diced tomatoes, 8 quarts of spaghetti sauce, 19 pint and a half jars (24 oz jars) of spaghetti sauce, 35 pints of salsa, and 5 quarts of pickles.

 

It took us four days, but we got it all done. Just in time for weekend fun. Thanks for being crazy with me Shanny!