There are three general categories of tomatoes: sauce, slicer and cherry. Sauce tomatoes have thicker, meater fruit with less water which makes them ideal for marinara. Slicers are the big beef steak types that you want on sandwiches. And cherries are the little, sweet gems that are great for popping in your mouth while you water the garden. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of tomato
Simple Canned Tomatoes
The first frost of the season waits for no one! I can’t use grad school as an excuse to delay the coming cold season, so I’ve been spending some early mornings and late evenings in the kitchen processing tomatoes. When I don’t have time to make a big batch of sauce, I am canning them simply on their own. Canned tomatoes in their own sauce
Late Summer Already
How did it get to be September already? Is someone playing a trick on my calendar? Here we are in the thick of tomato and squash season. I feel like it all happened overnight! I have been volunteering intermittently at the Urban Farm between summer vacations and it is just bursting there right now. I probably consume more food while I’m working than I help
Friends in the Right Places
In addition to friends in low places, I am also fortunate to have friends in all the right places when it comes to growing food. I recently spent an afternoon at the Courthouse Garden here in Eugene, which is a re-entry program for ex-cons and also a class on urban farming through the University of Oregon. They were blessed with a huge donation of tomato
Canning Tomatoes
Class is in full swing at the Urban Farm, but there is still more produce than 68 students can handle. The first week of class I came home with another, somewhat smaller, bucket of tomatoes. I’m not really hurting for marinara sauce anymore and we are pretty stocked on ketchup. I decided it would be best to just simply can these guys as-is. Canning tomatoes
Tomato Sauce = Fail
My eyes are still wet with tears and I can’t believe I am making myself write this post. I had a huge bucket of Roma tomatoes from the Urban Farm I have been planning to can into marinara sauce. I waited a week for them to ripen to the perfect level. You don’t want them overripe, but I wanted them really red. Finally, they were
Heirloom Tomatoes
My crop of heirloom tomatoes is finally in full swing! They are about three weeks late due to some chilly weather that hung around Portland this Spring. Then tack on another couple weeks from my “oops” this Spring when I realized I hadn’t been giving my seedlings enough hours under the grow light. At several intervals during their ripening this summer I thought, “Was this