Processing tomatoes for a rainy day

One of the big challenges in growing what you eat is the seasonal shift which precludes growing certain vegetables all year long. Refrigerated transport and hot house growing as well as the obscene practice of shipping produce from one hemisphere to the other has spoiled us with out of season fruit and veges.

We are attempting to shift a portion of our harvest to the seasons when we can no longer just walk out and pick them ripe of the vine.

 

Drying and freezing

The simplest options for us at present are drying and freezing. These tomatoes will be frozen (as stewed pulp) for soups and pasta sauce.


A days picking of vine ripened Roma. This variety is best suited to stewing as is rather dry and bland when used in salad or sandwich.

We wanted to try and reduce the mixture down so it wasn't so watery. This takes quite a it of stewing so rather than wasting gas or electricity we decided to do it on the barbecue using trimmings from the pine trees.

Not sure how long it was on here but at least an hour or so.


Another cunning way to make use of tomatoes, eat them for breakfast. Preferably with other yummy home grown ingredients such as refried potato, eggs and pepper.

 

Got 'matos precious?

Got 'matos precious?

Our tomatoes are out of control, a huge improvement over last year.

We have a bunch of different varieties but the most prolific by far are the roma. Last year a lot of these ended up in the compost and subsequently sprung up all over the garden. Unable to bring myself to pull them out we are now drowning in tomatoes.
February 19, 2011
  tomato  preserve  stew 

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tomato  preserve  stew