With the long hot summer that we had this year there is an abundance of tomatoes sprouting up and available in backyard gardens, farmer's markets and grocery stores.
I even have a small cherry tomato plant on my balcony and had 3 tiny little tomatoes this season.
Yesterday I drove out to Oakville to film the EcoLosers family at home and doing some eco tasks.
They attempted to plant edible fruits and vegetables to cut down on buying products with packaging and in an effort to keep their food more local. They didn't end up with the variety of foods they planned but they have a huge amount of tomatoes. They seem to have a few varieties of tomatoes and as in all harvests they all become ripe close to the same time leaving you with a huge amount of tomatoes to do something with.
So yesterday we seperated the tomatoes to have them in 3 ways.
1. With the cherry tomatoes we cut them and placed them in a food dehydrator to make sundried tomatoes without the sun. The sun would have been great but it was late in the day and since it's raining today that wasn't an eco option yesterday.
2. The tiny grape and teardrop tomatoes were kept separate for summer salads.
3. The larger plum and beefsteak tomatoes were dunked into boiling water and peeled and food processed to make a quick tomato soup.
By next weekend they will be overrun with tomatoes and will have to think about preserving some of them in jars for the winter months.
There is nothing like the taste of a fresh off the vine and fully ripe summer seasonal tomato. Remember those tomatoes you bought at the store last winter? Do you remember how they tasted? Isn't it better to wait for the best time to eat them or find ways of preserving the summer harvest to have them in the winter. While you can't keep a fresh tomato in it's full form ready to cut in the winter you can find ways to preserve the flavour of tomatoes to use in cooked dishes in the winter.
One great thing to do if you have a backyard garden and have kids is to show them and teach them about the fruits and vegetables that you grown and keep them involved so that they know where their food comes from and what to do with it. Skills for their future life. These are skills generations before us took for granted but we have to think about future generations and restore the history of what food used to be.
I've been thinking of getting a dehydrator for tomatoes. My mother's garden was overrun with tomatoes this summer. She had more than she handle and started handing them out to neighbours. Now I have about 10 pounds of tomatoes in a box in my kitchen but I don't know if I can eat them all before they begin to go soft. Hence my need for a dehydrator.
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