ketchup gone wrong.

{FYI this is long.}

You know those awesome plans that we have sometimes?  The ones that we think about, prepare for, get excited over? I had one of those last week.

It all started when I knew my friend Pamela was going to be visiting from out of town and wanted to plan something, you know, FUN! She is a dear friend, who I love very very much, and if I doubted why she wanted to spend vacation time with me before, I really question it now. Unless, of course, she just is looking for some crazy stories to tell back home, because with me and my tribe in tow she will definitely bulk up her cocktail hour conversation.

It could go something like this, when some hot guy saunters over to her at a swanky San Francisco bar:

“Hey hottie, what did you do last week?”

She can answer with any of these-

“I watched in horror as my friend used tweezers to pick at a popped wart of her young child!”

Or “I swept my friends floor and noticed rotting bananas and other various pieces of fruit in each corner crevice of her kitchen!”

Or my favorite, and the one we will be focusing on today, “I took 50 pounds of tomatoes and attempted to make a ketchup that is really more like a tomato-water-sauce-thing!”

Hot, right?!

The people in play were me, Pamela, and Heather. There were also a bunch of miscellaneous children. But they didn’t help can. They mostly ate the packages of fig newtons I threw at them whenever they were within 5 feet of the kitchen area. Heather is my resident canning partner and the one who helped me concoct this plan. She blogged about it here.

So here we go:

Step 1-Take the 50lbs of tomatoes you acquired from Cash N Carry and skin them. That is what we were doing in the picture above. And by we, I mean Pamela. No one else had scalding fingers at the end of the day. The recipe said this would take 60 SECONDS for every 8 tomatoes.

They lied.

It takes approximately 57 MINUTES for every 1 pound. You do the math.

OR don’t do the math, actually, because the figures here are rough.

Okay, moving on.

Step 2:

Get the juice and seeds out.

Out Of Every Single Tomato.

Add in some onions. Process in a food processor.

This step sounds eaasy. And it would be if you were doing one batch (I think). But we weren’t doing one batch. We were doing 5.

Yes, we decided one batch would yield little fruit. We did not figure in the time it would take to do every step FIVE TIMES.

But even if it was just one batch we did not factor in the SUPER HOT TOMATO JUICE THAT SQUIRTS OUT OF A  SUPER HOT TOMATO.

Step 3:

Get bored of tomatoes. Curse the tomatoes. Decide a few dill pickle spears might be good to add to the mix. Spear 20 lbs of cucumbers.

Drink some PW iced coffee, Eat garbanzo bean bagels.

Wonder why we ever decided to hang out with Anya on a hot summer day making ketchup.

WHO MAKES KETCHUP?!

Step 4:

Put spears in quarts. Be happy because pickles are pretty and are quick to make.

Start to wonder how long the pureered tomatoates are going to take to cook. P and I needed to be out of the house by 5, Heather had to take her boys home by then. It was 3 in the afternoon at this point.The recipe says it takes 2 hours to cook down. After that it needs to reduce another hour with cheesecloth filled spices, then jarred and processed. Thats the time for ONE BATCH. Remember how many we are doing? FIVE!

Crap.

Ahhhh! Holy Tomato Puree!!!!!!!!!!

Ahhhhhhhh…Precious cucumbers…..Blissssssssss…..

Step 5: Put the puree on the stove top and let it sit for a few hours. In  the meantime, process the dills and clean up.

Clean up after canning is very rewardng. Somehow, once the counters are wiped everything seems at peace in the world.

At least usually.

This time however, we loaded Heathers car with all the gear to finish the ketchup at her house. We figured it would cook down a bit more, she would finish the jars off- easy peasy.

Yay For Good Plans!

P and I showered and I promised to make our dinner plans more gratifying then half made ketchup.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fast forward to later that night. On the way home I thought, I should really check on the ketchup, although I KNOW it has been done for ages, lets just check in on Heather and see how our condiment in doing. For friendships sake.

I look at my phone. She texted me at 8:19 panicked!!

Here is our texting conversation. I am green, she is white.

Heaven help us.

{Note that it starts a few days prior as we are price checking tomatoes. We are AWESOME! Ignore typos. I had two Mack&Jacks at dinner.}:

At that point I thought a  phone call might be more appropriate.

We decided that Heather should take the pot off the stove when she went to bed (12am) and her husband could turn it back on the stove when he left for work (5am). Around 1pm the next day Heather FINALLY thought it had reduced enough to jar.

To jar all TWELVE PINTS OF GLORIOUS KETCHUP.

Okay, and do you see this gorgeous photograph of SPICY TOMATO STOCK?! That is a pretty way to say ketchup juice that was left after Heather strained it.

You can use it in all sorts of delicious dishes. Like chili.

Or, okay, all we came up with was chili, but I am sure there are more uses.

Like homemade V-8.

And I know you are desperate to know the cost of this endeavor.

About $2.50 a pint. Not crazy expensive. Although it isn’t organic.

But it really isn’t about the bottom line here people.

WE ARE TALKING ABOUT 27 HOURS WORTH OF PREPARING/COOKING/REDUCING KETCHUP RIDICULOUSNESS.

Pamela cannot wait till she comes back and we make mustard.

Tags: canning, homemade ketchup, homemade pickles, ketchup, pickles