Jars of Home Canned Tomato Products Adding Up

Once my husband was out of the hospital and on the mend it was back to canning tomato products.  I had lost a bit of time but nothing I couldn't make up to reach my goal.  Tomatoes are funny in that they come in a rush but if the frost hits them they are unfit for consumption.  Tomatoes started about two weeks earlier this year so I already had it in the back of my head that they would be ending two weeks earlier.  Sure enough, my husband picked up the last hamper of tomatoes on the Sunday and Monday morning we woke to a rather heavy frost.
 

I was in a canning frenzy once my husband was out of the hospital.  A lot of folks don't really realize how much home canning can disrupt a kitchen.  My kitchen was basically chaos for the entire month of September with jars cooling, jars ready to be filled, jars waiting to be moved to storage and jars upon jars.  Pictured are 24 jars of salsa and 5 jars of seafood cocktail sauce all just fresh out of the canners.  Now technically these jars are supposed to sit for 24 hours undisturbed.  Mine tend to sit about 18 hours then are carefully moved to counter space out of camera range.  The thing is I need that spot for filling jars and removing hot jars. 

So the jars are adding up and I do have a rather nice system.  The jars go from the canners to this spot then are moved to their final cooling spot.  The I remove the rings, wash the jars and move them back to this spot for their photo.  Then they are labeled and moved into a basket for taking down to the pantry.  I do have a system :)