Lou's Chile Sauce

Follow steps 1 through 4 of Canning Instructions, using seven pint-size jars.

Enclose allspice in a double layer of cheesecloth and tie tightly with string.

Coarsely chop tomatoes; you should have 4 quarts, including juices. Peel and coarsely chop onions; you should have 4 1/2 cups. Stem, seed, and coarsely chop red and green bell peppers; you should have 3 cups of each.

In a 10- to 12-quart pan, combine spice bag, tomatoes, onions, red and green peppers, vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard, cinnamon, hot sauce, curry powder, nutmeg, ginger, and chiles. Measure volume (see "Sunset's Canning Tips" below). Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to mediumand stir often until mixture is thick and reduced by 1/2, about 2 hours. Lift out spice bag and discard.

Follow steps 5 through 11 of Canning Instructions, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace in each jar and processing jars for 15 minutes (see Notes).

Add butter to jams and jellies to prevent foam from forming during cooking. If you omit the butter, skim off the foam before ladling jam or jelly into jars. The recipe will yield about 1/4 cup less.

Measure all the sugar into a bowl before beginning the recipe. Many canning recipes call for a large volume of sugar to be added when a mixture is already boiling; measuring ahead simplifies this step and prevents mistakes.

Use a ruler to measure volume. Some recipes call for a mixture to be reduced by a certain amount. To ascertain this easily, insert a clean, wood ruler into the pan before cooking and measure how far up the mixture comes. Then cook as directed until it has reduced by the percentage specified. For example, if uncooked mixture measures 4 inches in pan and recipe says to reduce by half, cook it down to 2 inches.