Barefoot Kitchen Witch - In the Garden

Like, Ohmygod, The Valley Girls Are Up!

And so are the Brandywines, San Marzanos, White Tomesols...ALL of the tomatoes are up!  Bill discovered this last night, and this morning I took a few pictures. 

End of the Season Harvesting

Despite the cold, rainy (hey, just like today!) weather we had through just about all of June and well into July, our gardens produced plenty of great food for us.  Over the last week or so, we've been picking the last of this and the last of that, which is just as well because we had a frost the other night and whatever's not hardy out there is going to turn black soon.

We were happy and amazed with the number of tomatoes, squash, eggplant and peppers we ended up harvesting, in addition to all the greens - several plantings of pak choi, arugula and lettuces, swiss chard and so on.  We had one big head of cabbage - Bill made sauerkraut with that for our Oktoberfest meal.  We also had a nice lot of scallions and shallots and garlic.  Next year I'd like to plant potatoes.  We'll see.

Anyway, when I picked the tomatoes last week, I picked all the red or nearly-red ones and I decided to pick all the green ones, too.   

Might as well do something with them, right?  I've made fried green tomatoes in the past, but no one in the house really, really likes them, so forget that.  I thought I'd pickle some, but Bill has had pickled green tomatoes and wasn't nuts about them (I know, we suddenly sound so picky!) and I didn't think the kids would eat them, either, so I decided not to go there.  Instead, I did the same thing I've been doing with my red tomatoes:  cut them into chunks, put them in pyrex baking dishes, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast in a 300 - 325 degree oven until they were looking shrivelly. 

I tasted a couple of the roasted green tomatoes, and they have a tangy, tart fruit flavor very different from the warm, earthy red tomatoes.  Kind of like tomatillos.  I figured I can make salsas and chili sauces with the green tomatoes, and my usual spaghetti sauces with the red.  

  

  

  

Yeah.  When I say I picked all the tomatoes, I meant ALL of them.  Even tiny little babies like this guy.