TheBanyanTree: lazy bum

[paul]

I have seven cherry tomato plants.  They are inside of the 'dog free zone'.  I
water them.  I feed them.  They grow.  I get tomatoes.  It seems to work quite
well for all of us.

Along the fence, they grow seven to almost nine feet tall.  As they grow I
weave some vines through the fence.  Other vines fall with the wind to the
ground and they all keep on growing.  So far, they have crawled about ten feet
from the roots.  I just move the vines on the patio enough to have paths.  I
pick tomatoes.  And I eat a lot while picking.

I give the dogs a few too.  The blemished tomatoes.  Bambam has learned to
'chomp'.  Wilma and Fred are not real interested.... they seem to be busy
eating pears.  Dino likes pears, doesn't like tomatoes.  Schwartzer eats
anything and I think he has learned how to pick tomatoes.  Why not?  They all
know how to pick pears.

Yeah, I know that in mid-December I'll have enough 'dead stuff' to have a
small bonfire.  I know I will be cussing at myself for weaving the vines into
the fence.  I'll handle that pity party when it happens.

I picked three quarts of ripe tomatoes yesterday. It wasn't the first time.
Won't be the last time.  I don't actually measure, it's just that the easiest
thing to use as a basket is the old plastic pitcher I use for watering
houseplants.  Pitcher and a half, well, that's three quarts.  Two quarts is
about 70 tomatoes.

Then another quart+ today.  I already had forty or fifty tomatoes sitting on
the counter.  Just how much salad can I eat?  I've given enough away that
folks are getting tired of seeing me.


Ok, here's a plan.  Heat a pot of water to a simmer.  Slice off the stem ends
a put the tomatoes into the water for a couple of minutes, keep slicing....
ladle the hot tomatoes into a pot of cold water.  The skin slides off.  I
don't know where I learned that but I made a batch of spaghetti sauce last
week with fresh tomatoes and it was probably my best batch ever.  Anyway, fill
a two cup / half litre measuring cup with skinned whole tomatoes, dump into a
pint zip-lock freezer bag, squeeze out the air and freeze.  It's about equal
to a 28 ounce can of Hunt's.

So far, I have four bags of tomatoes for spaghetti sauce, chili, and
'casserole' (a.k.a. lasagna) or for making preserves.  It took all of a half
hour from start to having everything cleaned up and put away.

Lazy?  Me?  Yeah.  Too lazy to sterilize jars and can tomatoes.  Too cheap to
throw the tomatoes away.  I'm cool with that.  I know that about mid-February
I'll be cooking chili with my fresh frozen (not store bought canned) tomatoes.

I'm sure gitting rural.


paul
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