The amount of tomatoes that I peeled and deseeded would not fit into my largest cooking pot. That was even before I got halfway through all of the ripe tomatoes I had. I poured it into the large pot that we use for beer making and kept on peeling and deseeding until all the ripe tomatoes were in there. I also added my sauce starter recipe: garlic, onions, celery and carrots all diced and cooked in olive oil until they are very soft. I seasoned it with red peppers, black pepper, salt and loads of herbs. After cooking it down by half so that the sauce is nice and thick, it filled seven quart jars with about a pint extra. I put it into clean jars with good tight lids in the refrigerator until I can either borrow a pressure canner, or get some containers to freeze it all. I might just have room in the freezer for all of it. I would rather can it, but I read the food safety recommendations for pasta sauce and pressure canning is recommended. I read that you can just water bath process canned tomatoes, so I will be making canned tomatoes out of the rest of the tomatoes, I think. I just hope I can come up with enough jars. The heirloom tomatoes are starting to make lots of fruit now, too. The only bushes that are starting to lag a bit are the Roma tomato bushes on the porch. I fed them some fertilizer, but I think they are just suffering for being confined to a pot and being allowed to get too dry a few times. The really exciting news is that I picked five rather large eggplants two days ago, and already there are a couple more that are definitely large enough to pick.
Look at these beauties. I am going to cook them up tonight. I need to get some Parmesan cheese or maybe lasagna fixings. They go great in anything really, once you fry them up. I fried a bunch of sliced eggplant up for pizza topping last time we had homemade pizza night at our house. My aunt loved them.
Here is a blurry shot just so you can see relative size to my hand.
I ordered two crocheted cotton market bags from Amie at www.etsy.com/shop/amieq to put my produce from my garden in. They got here so fast and are such great bags, I can't say enough. They are very sturdily made and I have no fear about sticking them in the wash when they get dirty. They hold up to the tens of pounds of tomatoes, cucumbers and onions that I have been transporting in them. I will also use them when I go grocery shopping. I love them. You can also see some tomatillos here that I picked this week. I broiled them and processed them with some broiled Anaheim chilies and jalapenos. They weren't bad. I wish I had more of them.
Here you can see that someone climbed up into my garden, grabbed some tomatoes, ate them right there and then and threw the tops right down in the front of the garden so I could make sure and see that they were there. Since I took this picture, I have not seen any evidence of trespass, or vandalism. I wonder what this person was thinking.
Well, I should get back to work figuring out what to do with all of the sauce. I will let you know how the tomato canning goes.
I also made a trip over to the in laws garden. Wow, it is looking really good. The corn is getting close to being ready and they are still picking loads of green beans. Actually they are getting even more green beans now because the pole beans are now coming on. The pumpkins, squash and melons are doing great. They have one pumpkin that is getting so big, it is threatening to shadow out everything else. They have several watermelons that will definitely get ripe, not to mention cantaloupe. I am allergic to cantaloupe, but they look really delicious. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the piles of cucumbers that they are harvesting. It is so cool to see. Next time I go I will have to take some pictures for you.
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