Tomato Processing

Here's a brief follow-up about my vegetable garden. June was abnormally hot, but cool enough at night for tomatoes to set fruit. We've had all-you-can-eat tomatoes since July 1, and the eggplant and chiles kicked in three weeks later.

August has been much cooler, which means I can spend less time watering and more time processing tomatoes for storage. We get 2+ liters of primo Roma tomatoes every 3 or 4 days. Nick the bottoms with a paring knife, dunk them into boiling water two pints at a time for 15 seconds, and the skins peel away effortlessly. The tomatoes go into bags with the bare minimum metadata, and then into my deep freezer -- destined for a late autumn pasta sauce, or a mid-winter stracotto.