Pursuing the canning path

With many, many pounds of rotting tomatoes on my kitchen counter, I decided the canning must continue. I borrowed this handy machine from my friend Ann Marie:

Sarah, Samantha, others here-- have you ever used one of these??
Super simple machine; amazing life saver with tomatoes. I could NOT believe how easy it was to process pounds and pounds of tomatoes in one quick sitting. Everything goes in-- just quarter the tomatoes, and it separates the seeds, the skins, cores, etc. I even ran the "guts" through it 4 or 5 times after the first run through and got still more juice and pulp. I got a huge bowl of my final product without having to quick boil the tomatoes and throw them in ice water to skin, etc.....

After all that work, I was still amazed that I only got 2 jars of final product-- spaghetti sauce. I even added shredded summer squash, fresh basil and oregano, chopped peppers and onions...to provide more bulk. After simmering for a couple hours to reduce it to a nice, thick consistency, I ended up canning 2 jars. That is a lot of vegetables and work for a very small amount of turn out. It is delicious, though :)

Mike did some figuring the other day on how much it cost for me to make homemade applesauce. I got 4 1 1/2 pint jars out of 10 lbs of apples (I left all the skins on, so I got more than you probably would without skins). The apples, which were organic and locally grown, were #2 grade (still not many rotting spots to cut out) and cost $2/lb. (The grade #1 were $3/lb.) So 10 lbs of apples cost $20, and I got 4 jars out of that. That's pretty pricey applesauce at $5/jar. Now it *did* taste better than the store-bought stuff, and I *do* love supporting a local business, and I actually don't mind the tremendous work and time I committed to it since I like to cook. But I'm bummed that this isn't saving us money. I suppose if we had our own apple trees....and a garden, this canning stuff would be more financially-viable.

Samantha, you always have amazing gardens. Do you can? Freeze? Give surplus away? Just eat and eat veggies every day of the summer? Looking for insight :)