Monday, September 21, 2009

You Say Tomat-oh, I Say Enough Already!

I picked 52 pounds of tomatoes yesterday. Calculating the poundage required me to get on the scale in the late afternoon, on a Sunday, after leftover pizza and brownies. It was not the most fun thing I did yesterday, but I digress...

Tomatoes!

Last year I planted 6 tomato plants and hardly got any tomatoes due mostly in part to user error, but also to the fact that the weather was a little cool. This summer I planted 6 tomato plants and my advanced tomato growing skills combined with absolutely perfect tomato growing weather have resulted in approximately 200 pounds, and counting, of tomatoes.

This bunch will become salsa on Thursday. I'd love to feel confident about drying tomatoes so I could find another way to preserve the pounds of tomatoes that will come next, but I suspect my drying efforts would result in wasted fruit. For now I'll stick with my canned tomatoes, tomato jam (thanks to Erika's recipe last year), pizza sauce and salsa.

Any other tomato suggestions? (I have loads of pint jars, a few half pints, but I'm out of quarts and I do not want to buy more jars this year.)

It may be the official end of summer, but we are on track to have at least two 90+ degree days this week which will only aid to ripen more tomatoes! Is it possible I might still have tomatoes a couple weeks into October?

2 comments:

Shannon said...

We have a dehydrater and Will tried drying some of our tomatos, but they came out moldy. I think salsa is always a good use of tomatos. No on turns down a jar of salsa.

Debbie said...

Ohhhh! I'm so jealous!!! How about sun dried tomatoes! Yum! I've also made sun-dried type tomatoes in the oven...low heat and a LONG cooking time! I love them on sandwiches, paninis and pizza.