These Tomatoes are no Joke

cherry tomato plants

A couple of years ago a few rogue tomato plants popped up in our front planting bed. There must have been seeds in the mulch because I don't put in any vegetables. Between the bunnies and the squirrels, it is an exercise in futility. The bed isn't the best for tomatoes as it only gets the morning sunlight, but for whatever reason the tomatoes took off. They were cherry tomatoes and delicious in salads and just as a snack. And oddly enough, the squirrels left them alone.

Last year a couple new plants popped up, in addition to a couple in the original location. But this year they was an explosion of plants in the front yard. There were seven or eight in the same beds as last year, but five more came up in the bed on the other side of the front walk. All of the plants were quite prolific, despite receiving zero care from me. You know darn well that if I had planted tomatoes, this would not be the case.

With the frost warning approaching, we picked all the tomatoes on Sunday, red and green ones alike. I filled a huge silver bowl, and Jim nearly filled a large bucket. What to do with all of these tomatoes? I read and dismissed dozens of recipes, particularly those that required a food processor or any straining of the tomatoes.

Sweet Tomato Jam

Monday I made some Sweet Tomato Jam, which has an interesting mix of spices and jalapeños in addition to sugar and some honey. But that sauce had to cook for two hours, and in the end I got two and a half pint jars of the jam. Way too much work for too little reward. I can't see eating this on toast, but I will say that it was good on tilapia.

Tuesday I decided to modify a Pepper Jelly recipe that came with my jam and jelly maker. I substituted the tomatoes for the green peppers, cooked it in the jelly maker, and then processed the four pint jars the recipe yielded. I haven't tried it yet as it didn't seem like it would go with the Halloween candy I was eating last night. Why did the tomato blush? Because it saw the salad dressing.

Pepper Jelly

There were still pounds of tomatoes left, so I froze them today. I now have four quart size bags in the freezer. That buys me time until I decide what to do with them. I know I want to make some tomato juice in the Vitamix blender at some point.

All this work makes me relieved that I don't have a large garden on my yard. I don't know how our foremothers did it all. What I do know is that some of the rogue tomato plants will not see the light of day next summer. Enough is enough.

Review of Chef Jake

Man, did Jake make an outstanding entree for Katie's birthday last night! I don't know what it is called, but since I bought the ingredients I know it contained penne pasta, prosciutto ham, Romano cheese, egg yolks, creme, onion and garlic. He served it with french bread and a Caesar salad, and I had purchased the large chocolate chip cookie Katie requested as her cake. The pasta was amazing! Definitely restaurant quality, but after watching him make it I decided no matter how good it tastes, I would probably never try it. It was a lot of work. There were seven kids here for dinner, and then a couple more came later after they got off work. I have to admit, it was fun having all the kids in the house again. (I just wish it hadn't been when I had cleaned the house in preparation for the house tour!) It is so quiet when Katie is off at school.

I don't think I mentioned that Katie has picked up an internship for the summer. She is working for a social media marketing company, and she goes to Clayton Monday thru Thursday from 9-5. She has only worked two days so far, but I think it is right up her alley. Several of her classes Freshman year dealt with social media and search engine optimization, so she definitely can put her knowledge to good use. She has two of her four summer classes completed already, so I don't think she'll have a problem keeping up with her classes and working that many hours. I'm very excited for her, and hoping that she can use some of her new skills on my website.

Jim and I sweated off a few pounds today getting ready for the house tour. Jim planted a few day lilies and put down some fresh leaf mulch, and I cleaned windows, swept cobwebs from the porches and washed off the patio furniture. In the afternoon we headed out to find something to put on the plates in the dining room, picked up a plant for a bare spot in the conservatory, and an additional plant to go on the table where tickets will be collected on the front porch. And then the storms came! The rain washed away most of the mulching Jim had done, and made a mess out of my newly cleaned windows and doors. Dammit! It's bad enough doing it once, without having to deal with it all again tomorrow morning. I'm afraid to look at the forecast since they were predicting rain all weekend. Hopefully the rain will hold off for the four hours of the tour. I told Jim once this event is over we need to have a series of parties here since everything will be looking so nice.