Summer's Scarlet Globes

Messy you say? Yep, a tee-total mess here with tomatoes. My days are often disjointed, interrupted, wasted messes, but today it became worse than usual when I bought 30 pounds of tomatoes at the farmer’s market. They were supposed to be thirds, not even as nice as seconds, but I pulled out about 8 pounds of nice slicers. Some of the others I chunked up were so nice, and a good tomato right now can cost a dollar a piece.

But chunk I did and then cooked them slightly before running them through the ricer. So far I have five quarts of juice beaten out with the wooden “pusher”. I have another five quarts cooking down. Nothing like homemade tomato juice in January. Put in an added dash of salt before drinking and um, um good.

 

My mother processed tomatoes and other things all summer long when I was a kid. I did a little of it myself when I had kids at home. Lately, I’ve let most things go by and just enjoy what I can during the season. But I could not pass that bargain of 30 pounds of tomatoes this morning. I will pop mine into the freezer rather than bothering with a pressure canner.

 

Some people count religiously their quarts and even their pints. My mom’s goal was always at least 100 jars not counting the pints if possible. A pint of tomatoes or juice would be one breakfast for me! I love tomatoes!

Yesterday threw us a curve when the heat index jumped up to 106 in the afternoon. Storms with hail were forecast. Storms and hail had already come through on Tuesday night so this was a repeat. This morning the deck was washed fresh, nothing was hail destroyed, and tea felt good in the early air. Then came the tomatoes…a good summer day!