Kitchen Prep...Sometimes Easy, Sometimes Hard

Cooking from scratch is the best way to go...no two ways about it.  Except when it comes to some of the prep work. 



I wanted to make French Beans with Tomato Sauce that I found in the Preserving book by Pat Crocker...a tasty sounding recipe that would give me a different and interesting way to can some of our beans.  While the recipe seemed simple enough, it involved a lot of preparation...including skinning tomatoes and cutting green beans french style.  Simple enough...I thought.

Skinning the tomatoes was easy...cut a "X" in the bottom of the tomatoes...

 ...drop them into a pot of boiling water until they start to crinkle (2 - 3 minutes)...

 ...drop them into a bowl of ice water...

...remove them from the water...

...and pull the skin away...

...the whole process taking about 15 minutes.  It's easy to do and maintains every single bit of tomato nutrition and flavor.

The process of slicing green beans French style is another story entirely.  There are tools that are sold to accomplish this, but I don't have one, and my "back to basics" mentality led me to believe I could do this, no problem.  Fact is, it isn't that it's hard to do...you place the bean on it's side and using a paring knife...

 ...cut the bean in half, lengthwise, giving a lovely cross sectional view...French green beans.

The recipe called for 3 pounds of beans...doesn't sound like a lot until you start slicing!  Half way through the pile of beans, I'm asking myself "what were you thinking?" and "is this really necessary?" and "who says store purchased tools to make things easier is not a reasonable 'back to basics' approach?".  Then I'd look at how pretty the beans looked, and pat myself on the back for taking the time to learn this skill, and keep on slicing...for 2 hours...all 3 pounds...for me, this task falls into the sometimes hard category. 

When I looked at that beautiful bowl of beans, and the job was done, I decided it was worth it...but I think purchasing the tool is a good idea! 

Another sometimes hard kitchen activity is processing the jars in a pressure canner...I'm still challenged with having too much of the liquid in my jars either evaporating or being pushed out of the jars while they are processing in the canner.  I asked one of my friends, who thinks I need more water in the pot (even though I am following the manufacturers instructions)...so I'm going to try her approach and see if it makes a difference (she says have the water in the pot come half way up the jars).  Good news is I'm feeling experienced when processing jars in a water bath!

This jar of French Beans in Tomato Sauce looks good though, and I saved a little of the sauce that remained in the cooking pot in the freezer...tonight I'm going to add a little of the saved sauce and we are going to try these beans with our dinner, I'll let you know how they taste!

Please share any advice or suggestions you may have for my pressure canner issue...I'd love to know what you think!

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise