Tomato Tomato

 Read that in two different ways...long a and a schwa, okay? 

It has been a tomato kind of day. With Tom off on a well earned vacation, I received a sudden and temporary promotion to head gardener. It has come at a time when there is an abundance of rain...and as a result, an abundance of split tomatoes. Poor dears, so parched, so starved for moisture all summer and then force fed in a way that must have felt like taking a sip from a firehose. There has been a lot of a broken hearts out there. They will find redemption in the compost pile. 

Those that were safe or passable, made it to a boiling cauldron this morning where they soaked luxuriously for a minute or two before a polar plunge wrinkled the skin off them. At least, the start of the skin removal. I had to release the many tomatoes from their jackets until my fingers resembled their puckered tattered coats. Ish. That's about all I can say, "ish." I take that back, I actually can't describe the satisfying "pop" when a cherry tomato finally breaks open in the icy water...but with the volume of tomatoes, it did get old. 

I chopped up onion (store bought- we've not had the best onion yield) and garlic..(again, from the store) and the mistakenly purchased Italian parsley, along with garden peppers and basil, a little sugar, olive oil and salt...it has been simmering down for the past hour or two and it is beginning to taste a lot like good sauce! Fine sauce! Whew. 

The return on this time consuming investment will be felt later. This batch is scheduled to hit the freezer for when the weather actually turns and hot pasta dinner sounds like what you want and need. To quote one of my favorite folk/blues singers, "Taste a little of the summer." [Grandma put his in jars but I put mine in freezer bags]- good version but these vegetarians don't eat chickens. 

While it was simmering away, cooking down, synthesizing flavors and all that, I went out and removed, nay, ripped out a very large and overgrown section of tomato plant volunteers. They will also find redemption in the compost pile. Kind of a universal rule. If you can't be useful, at least you'll be compost one day.