Tomatoes, tomatoes - July 17, 2021

 

My sister called me a couple of days ago and said that our brother was out of town, and on Friday she was going to pick the vegetables in his garden while he was gone.  She wondered if I would want any of the vegetables she expected to harvest.

I thought about my own garden.  I'd already planned to pick my own tomatoes Friday for another batch of chili sauce.  The cucumbers would probably need picking, too.  I asked my sister to call me after she'd done her picking.

That evening, The Husband and I went down to our garden to see how things were progressing.  One of the San Marzano tomato plants had begun to turn yellow, and I had sprayed it with peroxide-water to see if it would halt the process.  It hadn't.  It was painful, but I pulled up the plant, picked off all of the green and half-ripe tomatoes, and tossed the plant over the hill.  I soaked its neighbors with the peroxide-water, hoping to stave off any fungus that had attached to them.  While I was doing this, The Husband picked the cucumbers and green beans; we gave those to Nanny, but kept the squash that he'd also picked.

Yesterday morning, my sister called from our brother's garden.  She'd picked about 3 dozen tomatoes, some okra, and a nice eggplant.  She said she'd leave them on the porch.  She also said that the okra was infested with Japanese beetles and wondered if I could bring some bug dust to kill them.  I said I would.

When I got off work yesterday, I headed for my brother's house.  On the way, I stopped to buy some bug spray for the beetles.  Just as I got to my brother's driveway, rain started to pour down.  I sprinted to the front porch to get the vegetables and then waited in my car for a while to see if the rain would let up.  But my weather radar app showed a big cloud coming, and I eventually left without spraying the okra.

I came home and went right to work scalding and chopping my brother's tomatoes.  There weren't quite enough to make a whole batch of chili sauce, so I went to our garden for enough to finish the batch.  It took three hours to process all those tomatoes and chop the onions and peppers.  By that time, The Husband had come home from work, and it was time to start supper.  I put the big pan of chopped vegetables in the refrigerator to deal with in the morning.

Today, I cooked it.  And cooked it.  And cooked it.  It has to cook for 45 minutes before the spices and vinegar are added.  Then it has to cook down by half.   Altogether, I must have cooked that stuff for nearly three hours.  

But it is really tasty.