Tomatoes, Pickles And A Surprise

The harvest yesterday was just a tad smaller than what we got use to.  The cucumbers, both slicing and pickling are starting to slow down now and so are the green beans.  We did have quite a few cantaloupes and tomatoes.  The watermelons are looking good and we are about to have a few here and not sure how fast we are going to be able to eat them but will give it a valiant try.  After looking at what we picked Lisa decided we would work on tomatoes and then pickles.  She had a new recipe for just making tomato sauce, not pasta sauce.  It seemed pretty easy, all we had to do it wash, de stem and quarter the tomatoes. Cook them for a few minutes, put them through a processor and cook and reduce them.  Sounds like a piece of cake!  It was except we did not realize that reducing the tomatoes would take so long.  During the reduction process we cleaned up, had lunch, I worked in the Crafty Cottage and about two plus hours later we were ready to ladle the sauce into jars and process them.  We thought it would only take about 8 pint jars but we were wrong.  The sauce made 14 pint jars.  After the sauce was jarred and waiting for processing we started working on making some more bread & butter pickles.  We have the pickling process down so well that Lisa and I don't even have to think; we just do it.  After the pickles were done we were still processing the tomato sauce so we took care of the green beans and processed them for freezing.  It was a busy day. 
When we were done I went to check the mail after dinner and got a wonderful surprise from my daughter Jenny.  She gave me a Fitbit last year and I have been using it faithfully but it acted up last week and I could not get it to sync.  Well I had mentioned it to her but then I got it working again.  Yesterday Jenny sent me a new Fitbit Charge.  This is a major upgrade for me.  The charge does so many more functions then my Fitbit did.  It tracks steps, distance, calories burned and active minutes like my fitbit does now but the Charge also measures floors climbed, tracks your sleep, has an alarm and tells time; it is a watch too!  Thank you Jenny, I love it!!!  Now it is time to get it charged and synced so I can start wearing and using it!  WooHoo!