Hi, thank you for your response. They have finally started sprouting. Seems to have taken 2-3 days longer then the rest of the ones. Not sure why, everything is the same. It's the first time I've tried them. Maybe it was the seed itself.

Hi Dave, Probability is an essential element of decision making, along with reward and consequences. Most of life's hazards are actually within our control, but we chose to take the risk. For example, one of the greatest risks we all take each day is driving in a car. We can completely eliminate this risk by not getting in a car, but then the quality of life that comes with mobility is reduced below our acceptable range, so we choose to take the risk. Similarly I can eliminate all risk of dying in a plane crash by not flying, yet I have flown in over 1,000 airplanes because I judged the reward of keeping my job to outweigh the extremely low risk of a plane crash. To eliminate all risk of botulism, we would not only have to stop eating home canned foods, but also stop eating in restaurants (25 cases of botulism in the CDC report) and stop eating commercially canned foods (10 cases). So really it is degrees of risk that we deal with, and make decisions versus reward and consequences. If there was no consequence to using an approved recipe, then I would agree with you that taking additional risk makes no sense. In my case, however, there is a consequence. I grow my own vegetables and create my own recipes with them, and I get great pleasure from this. My salsa, for example, is quite unique and tastes much better than anything I have ever found commercially. I am not willing to give this up, so I choose to accept what may be slightly more risk to keep this pleasure, just as I choose to drive, fly, and eat out. Naturally if I truly believed that my recipes and methods were materially unsafe I would abandon them in a flash. That's where statistics come into play. According to Ball there are over 20 million home canners in the USA, putting up hundreds of millions of jars of food. With tomatoes being the most popular home garden crop, I have to believe there are perhaps tens of millions of jars of tomato products put up annually. Add to this the fact than many, if not most, home canners have never heard of the NCHFP, nonetheless follow their guidance (we see this everyday on this forum) and I would expect people to be dropping like flies - but they are not. With no reported cases of botulism in the CDC report caused by home canned salsa over the 10 year period, I conclude that the probability of getting botulism from tomato products, even unapproved recipes, is extremely low and acceptable for me. Certainly not acceptable for everyone, just as there are millions who refuse to fly, but with these statistics - along with my careful canning techniques and 35 year clean record - I truly believe my salsa is very safe. I wouldn't eat it otherwise. As I have said before, the teachings from you, Linda Lou, and others on this forum are extremely valuable in guiding people toward the lowest known risks, provided they are willing to only can approved recipes. But there are many of us who chose a slightly different risk/reward equation. To each his own. For the record, although my salsa is not an approved recipe do to higher levels of onions and garlic, I did change to acidifying it with citric acid and pressure canning as I found these did not materially change the taste. TomNJ

Just FYI to report back. I used the oven method of getting the skins off that Lucille mentioned in the "Food Mill" thread. While peeling them I realized that a lot of the flavor and goodies were in the peels or just below it. Then what I had after I chunked up the tomatoes was a watery, chunky tomato sauce basically. So I decided to boil it to thicken it a bit. BTW, the FLAVOR of the yellow romas was WONDERFUL. I recommend them and will be growing more next year. The plants are ugly as sin and bug and disease prone, but they still manage to produce prolifically. I'm gonna freeze this sauce. If I was to do it again, I would use my Roma food mill on about half of it and just cook it down to a sauce. If I want intact tomato bits preserved I will dry them, that's the only method that makes sense. I was worried that cooking a sauce might destroy the healthful compounds in the tomatoes, but then I googled this question and came up with this fascinating Cornell Univ. study that says cooking tomatoes actually INCREASES the lycopene. So next time I'm going to cook the sauce down with the skins and seeds in it, to extract all the nutrition first, and then run it through the food mill. Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell Chronicle,

I don't believe that Sunray is really that low acid. But it is sweet. The first year I grew it was the first year I tried some heirlooms from Glecker's. In a blind taste test it won 1st place among all the varieties we grew that year. But if people had their eyes open, it never won. Having said that, Dorothy, I too have found that conditions affect Sunray's flavor. This year ours are good! But for two years before that it didn't do so well. Baker Family Heirloom is right up there as one of my all time favorites. It has good flavor (every single year, now matter where it's grown) and it's as good for processing as Rutgers or Marglobe. It produces all season if the heat doesn't kill it in July. This year our plants hardly slowed down. They have kept producing all summer and appear to be headed into a productive fall. The vines are about 9' long now, so they are flopping over their tall cages. I aways make sure to put in a good number of Baker Family Heirloom, since they are such a good all around tomato. Glad you enjoy it. I have some older friends in Siloam Springs, AR for whom I grow tomato seedlings every spring. Every year they want a higher percentage of Baker Family Heirloom tomatoes. They didn't care for Sunray either . Still, I enjoy it, and it keeps very well. George