A couple of months ago in a fit of inspiration and green-thumb-ness I bought a whole heap of little seedlings at the markets to plant into an empty garden bed. I really didn't need any MORE tomatoes - I already had about 12 plants on the go - WAY more than two people are ever going to be able to eat. But buy them I did. Any now they are all ripening. At the same time. As they do.
So today I got in and bottled them all. They've been sitting on the table, and the benches, overflowing from all the big dishes I own. Waiting and ripening and crying out to be turned into something delicious. So I did some turning. Big job and now I'm about ready to relax with a glass of wine while they bubble away on the stove in their final step before making their way to the pantry to be looked at and admired by anyone who comes over to visit.
I had every intention of cooking up some whiz bang sauces and relishes with them but, when it came to the crunch, I went with lazy and just bottled them au-naturale. Because when I really think about it (not too hard though, I'm beat!) that's how I'm more likely to use them anyway instead of as a 'finished' flavourful sauce. And this way I can still make the yummy, flavourful sauces while at the same time having a basic base sauce as well. Do you like how I'm justifying my lazyness? Not that I need to justify my actions - I could have just as easily said that's what I was going to do in the first place and no one would be any wiser....meh.
So I have ended up with 10 jars in total. That's a lot of tomatoes that needed skinning (I don't do tomato skin) and cutting. Three bottles are red roma tomatoes - my favourite - and the other 7 are yellow romas (I can't remember their actual name but they are the shape of romas, just yellow). The bushes with the yellow romas are jam-packed full of fruit - still.
The nice warm days we've had this past week have seen all the fruit ripen seemingly overnight (or over-day. I had a search and find the other morning and them when I went back in the afternoon there were more ready to be picked! I can't keep up!). I kept waiting and waiting for the yellow romas to start to turn red...even complaining to the LOML at their slowness...until finally I realised that they were never going to go red (cos they're yellow romas) and started picking them (DUH!). It seems like every day I go down to the veggie patch I'm coming back with a a kilo or two of tomatoes (and cucumbers and zucchini and corn - the story continues!). I'm loving it.
So now I can't wait to be using all my lovely bottled tomatoes in my cooking. Mmmmmm.....what to cook, what to cook? Think it's time to get out the recipe books and start the salivation.....I love food porn! I really do!
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