While I was in Michigan with my family last week, my mom and brother and I made and canned marinara sauce. My sister and my other brother helped take care of Honeybun and Little Man while we turned two bushels of Roma tomatoes into 16 quarts of sauce.
It's the most delicious marinara ever, but this is actually the first year that I've made it. In past years I've just canned the whole ripe tomatoes that we grew in our garden. Last year I canned roughly 75 pounds of tomatoes in the month of August.
This year is a different story. We still planted our garden, but I was completely unable to tend it and my husband has only been able to harvest and water a little. It's amazing how different the garden looks. Last year it was a rather orderly and weedless plot. This year it's a full on thicket. Turns out I had been spending 10+ hours each week watering, weeding, harvesting, and tying up plants.
It seems that we only have so much life force to send out. Last year we gave a large chunk to the garden and were rewarded with fresh veggies all summer and homegrown canned tomatoes all winter. This year we're channeling all of it into Little Man and Honeybun and we have two adorable and healthy babies, but only some zucchini, a few peppers, and a small harvest of tomatoes. I'll gladly take the trade. Besides, the home canned tomatoes might not have come from our garden this year, but my mama makes a mean marinara!
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