Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

Last week I got tomatoes from the same farm where we buy chickens, eggs, and turkeys. They usually don’t sell their tomatoes, but were through putting up their own supply and let me reap the harvest from their still-producing 35 tomato plants. The plants are under a greenhouse cover and still flourising as if it were still summer. They have paste tomatoes (I can’t remember the variety) and also heirloom brandwines.

I mostly brought home paste tomatoes, for my own processing, but couldn’t resist those brandywines, for regular and fresh eating. I have eaten so many… delicious!

Last year, I was given many tomatoes and I turned them into cooked tomato sauce. This year, I couldn’t bear to cook the tomatoes to death while I preserved them. (Fresh is best, you know.) So I whizzed many of them in the Vita-Mix and froze the chunky raw sauce in quart size zipper-seal freezer bags. Many others, I have sliced into 1/4″ slices for rotations through the dehydrator at a low 100 degree temperature (so as to keep those enzymes viable). I finally broke down and purchased 4 additional trays for my American Harvest dehydrator, to maximize the consumption of energy required to run it. The trays were on sale at Bi-Mart for 10% off. That means I’ve had 7 trays of tomatoes drying at all times. This is far more productive than I used to be, when I could only dehydrate 3 trays at a time.

There’s not been a frost and the tomatoes are still producing at that farm, so they say. So on Wednesday, I’m going to get more. Call me crazy, but how can I turn down the opportunity of acquiring bushels of home-grown, natural, local tomatoes? I have to admit, the kitchen is full of a sickly sweet tomato fragrance, but I think I can handle it for one more week.