Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

We've been hauling in tomatoes by the wheelbarrow. By the end of this week, I'll have another load.

Here's a look at the tomato bed after the last major picking. They're starting to age, but you can see they have another load on them ripening as I type. With the heat we are experiencing, they'll be ripe before weeks end.

We had to do something with all these tomatoes before they started to go bad. The freezer is pretty full as is, so we went ahead and spent last weekend canning.

I'll start with the salsa (actually made a couple of weeks ago). This is our first year growing Cherokee Purple and we love them! They are nice and meaty...

perfect for .......

Yep. Salsa. This salsa was absolutely delicious...tasting better about 2 days later. We used Annie's Salsa recipe (scroll to very last post for the bath-water version of the recipe) which is a version of one of the recipes in the USDA guidebook.

 

 

 

We used the roma's to make more paste.

This paste will be used as paste (of course), but also to make ketchup and bbq sauce later.

 

 

 

We used the CP and Heinz to make sauce.

I went to bed and didn't realize that DH used quart jars to make sauce! So when we open them, we'll have to freeze what isn't used.

 

The Celebrity teamed up with garden grown bell peppers, onions, and garlic to make some Sofrito ( a Latin dish).

We later added rice to finish the meal.

 

I didn't get a picture, but we also used the Celebrity and my lone cuke to make some gazpacho.

 

We ran out of steam, so we've still got more tomatoes and canning to do. We will be using the rest of the Celebrity to make stewed tomatoes and chopped tomatoes to can.

 

As for those left on the bushes....anybody need tomatoes?