Tomato Harvest After All

I was really disappointed when it got all frosty one night many weeks ago, so I had Seth go on out to the garden and just retrieve all the tomatoes that were on the bushes, green though they were. He brought them in all in a big bucket and just left the bucket on the kitchen floor. Not too much faith they would actually do much, eh? A couple days later I had a party in here, so I had to clean up stuff. There's not a real good way to make a big old bucket of green tomatoes look party-ish, so I used my Design Sense and lined them all up on the windowsills in the kitchen, living room, and my room. They looked pretty cute, I thought.

So but they sat there, very green and very hard for many many days. And then a couple of them began to blush, just a wee bit. And then the blushers got red. And then MORE started to blush! And it went from there, to where we had some getting actually ripe. My idea in planting five tomato bushes was that we would have an abundant harvest and process them into canning jars or whatnot. But obviously, with that plan dashed, we were still able to have an abundant harvest! I am still pretty pleased with this. Some went the way of all the earth before we were able to consume them, may they rest in pieces out by the tree where Seth chucks bad fruit. Some I made into a colossal batch of homemade tomato soup, which took me SO LONG that I had to put it away for several days before I got up the gumption to get it out and finish making it. Eric actually dug it pretty well and asked for seconds and asked to have it again. Seth said it was really strong, which it was.

Some we were able to use in salad or tacos. And the last of them I ingeniously used to make homemade spaghetti sauce, which when mixed with a can of regular sauce, was not too strong. Pretty good, actually. There was a ton of it and we had it for dinner two times in four days.

So Tomato Bounty after all that worry! It wasn't a nine-dollar salad tomato after all! With all these other brothers and sisters going ripe long after the fact, the average price-per tomato actually went down to where I would consider it a tomato bargain! And, sorry Seth, next year I'm planning to plant the same number of tomato plants, but suck it up and go get them MUCH earlier in the season, and coddle them and poultry-manure them and reap an even more abundant harvest!!!