This week was one of a great deal of food preservation. I did my massive deal-with-the-end-of-the garden cooking last weekend. This project entailed picking the many thousands of tomatoes that still were sitting on the plants in a state of serious greenness. Apparently, Kermit was right and it’s not easy being green. But it seems it’s even more difficult being red, since a lot of these tomatoes weren’t even heading toward a tiny tint of pinkishness. Most of them looked and felt like green baseballs.
I carefully sorted the total greenies from tomatoes that were either ripe or thinking about it. I also sorted the regular sized tomatoes from the cherry tomatoes. The net result was 12 pounds of green cherry tomatoes. As anyone who lives in the north will tell you, regular-sized tomatoes will ripen inside if you wrap them in newspaper. You can be eating them at Christmas. However, the old newspaper trick doesn’t work with cherry tomatoes at all. (Yes, in case you are wondering, I’ve learned from that mistake.)
Given that I had 12 pounds of green cherry tomatoes, clearly it was time for serious cooking. Pots and pans were everywhere as I canned many pints of green tomato salsa. The ripe cherry tomatoes I also turned into sauce. I used some of the sauce in an enormous lasagna, and froze some. Although I dealt with the cherry tomato situation, I still also have bazillions of (regular-sized) tomatoes all over the shop that are busy ripening.
That’s the theory anyway.