Just because I wasn't hot enough .....

So, it has been uncomfortably hot and humid for the last week or so. Yesterday was icky hot and humid, to the point where you have rivulets of sweat running down the small of your back and all you want to do is take a long cool shower. Today was more of the same, and the coming week is supposed to be worse.

So - what does a Lioness do?

Find a lake or other body of water to hang out in? - Nah.

Hunker down in front of a fan and drink your volume in water and iced tea with a good book? - No.

Perhaps hang out in my first floor studio where it is cool and dark? - Nope.

No - What I decided is that heating up my kitchen with cooking corn relish and tomato sauce then canning them.

Yeah - I am fairly certain I have lost my mind.

Yesterday I ventured out to one of the few local farms where you can still pick your own raspberries. Most of the local farms have gone to selling them only - and of course the cost is almost double that of doing it yourself. But while I was at this farm I noticed one of the girls who work there culling overly soft or older heirloom tomatoes out of the for sale baskets into a discard bucket. She said they give the old and bruised produce to some local pig farmers. I wistfully mentioned how they would make good sauce .... hearing this her manager said "She can have them if she wants for 1/2 price"

BONUS! Great tomatoes and a sale price. Was there any way I would actually turn that down? I think not.

Then on the way home I stopped by my usual farm and bought freshly picked ears of corn, sweet onions, peppers and parsley. So on today's agenda was Corn Relish and Roasted Garlic Tomato Sauce.

Normally I don't do this kind of heat intensive canning until the Fall when I take an entire weekend to make my jams, compotes and applesauce using fruit I have prepped and frozen during the summer., or the apples I picked and stored for up to two weeks in the basement. However sweet summer corn has a short shelf life and the one time I tried freezing tomatoes and using them later for sauce yielded a weak and watery end product. So I have found you have to use these ingredients as you get them.

Sample of ingredients for Corn Relish

Ingredients for Tomato Sauce

Corn Relish in Process

Blending the tomatoes in bathces

One way to combat the heat is to turn down the AC then set a box fan in front of the floor vent in the kitchen to increase as much as possible the flow of cool air into the room. And it seemed to work as I did not pass out - and I actually finished the canning.

Ta Daaahhhhhhh!!!!