Making Ketchup

Over the weekend, I decided that I was going to take the last of the tomatoes and make them into ketchup.

How hard could that be? I asked....

Turns out, not only is it hard, it's a pain in the behind.

This is the recipe that I followed:

The directions didn't look that hard, and I had all of the ingredients on hand.  I do love me my ketchup, and the thought of having ketchup without high fructose corn syrup is an appealing thought.

So, I put the tomatoes into a pot, and began to stew them down.  And they stewed, and they stewed.  4 hours later, and I still had a very, very thin sauce that looked like water.  No thickness whatsoever.  3 hours later, everything finally thickened up - and I felt as if I had a batch of applesauce - but made from tomatoes, instead.

This - THIS - is the final result of my 6 hours of effort and electricity.  I'm going to use this as BBQ sauce on some chicken later this week.

I don't know where I went wrong.  I don't know what I did wrong.  For now, I think I'll stick to the stuff in a bottle that's full of high fructose corn syrup.  The quest continues...