Craving Tomatoes
Last week I ordered a hamburger at a local greasy spoon. It came topped with a limp scrap of lettuce and a mushy, mealy, pink, sorry excuse for a tomato. We’ve had miserable fog, thick frost, black ice, and snow flurries, but it was this duo of pathetic vegetables that made me long for summer.
Flipping through seed catalogs and plotting my salad succession plan did not get me out of my funk. No. Only some straight up food porn would do. So I hopped on my laptop and brought up the Etsy shop foodchic. Wendy Dooldeniya’s gorgeous portraits of tomatoes were just the ticket.
The lovely green tomatoes seem like a promise to me that summer–and tomatoes picked straight off the vine–will come eventually, and a reminder that I should stick to eating my stash of frozen homegrown tomatoes until then.
Prints of these photos (and other lovely food portraits) are available at foodchic for $15.
I feel your tomato pain. I’m so glad I froze and dried lots of farmer’s market fresh tomatoes, which we continue to enjoy this winter. But, they aren’t fresh & there’s no great fresh tomato to be found. Plus, I didn’t keep a Red Robin cherry indoors this winter as I’d planned. (More on Red Robin, which I grew indoors last winter, here: http://www.gardenhelp.org/gardening/growing-your-own-tomatoes-all-winter/. — with photos of ripe tomatoes on the indoor plant with snow on the ground beyond it, through the window.)
This year I’m planning to grow an organic, heirloom tomato called Long Keeper. I’ll probably start it later in the season. Apparently,if harvested before the fall frost the tomatoes will sometimes keep all winter or (according to the catalog) at least 6-12 weeks, which pretty good. We’ll see about that!
January 27th, 2009 at 10:34 amI added dried tomatoes to my veggie soup the other day and it turned out great! Lots of flavor.
I just can’t wait till planting time!
January 28th, 2009 at 12:42 pmRobin–Keep me posted on Long Keeper. I wonder if it tastes good? Or if it just lasts a long time?
Marguerite–what a good idea! I’ve wanted to get a dehydrator ever since I interviewed this man in California who makes his own dried tomatoes and apples!
January 28th, 2009 at 2:32 pmDo you do anything special to freeze your tomatoes? I have never done that before, and just recently expanded my freezer space with the addition of a chest freezer, and would love to make use of it to extend the tomatoes I grow this year through next winter. Thanks.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:41 pmAndres–before freezing I seed and skin my tomatoes. To make removing the skins easier, I bring a big pot of water to a boil, drop the tomatoes in for about 10 seconds, and then remove them with a slotted spoon. When they are cool enough to handle I slip off the skins, slice them in half (around their equator), squeeze out the seeds, and then chop them. I load the chopped tomatoes with their juices into pint-size bags. The bags stack best in the freezer if you lay them flat on a shelf first. Once they are solid, you can stack the bags however you like. I’m jealous you have a deep freeze. We don’t have space for one in our tiny house!
January 28th, 2009 at 4:00 pmWilli, I used to be vigilant about removing skins after blanching the tomatoes to freeze. Because I put up literally hundreds of pounds of them to keep in our deep freeze (Willi — you will have room for one someday, I know it!), I don’t bother removing the skins. Big tomatoes at peak ripeness that are blanched, frozen and recooked in soups & stews later don’t seem to have the tough skins. They just disappear into the final cooking and don’t really bother me at all. If they are tough, I can pick them out as they float to the top. It’s just one more thing I’ve learned in my laziness
And, I’ll let you know about long keeper. This will be year one!
January 29th, 2009 at 9:14 amI miss tomatoes too, and no, the ones in the store aren’t even worth having. I bought a bunch of seeds to start. I’ll probably be drowning in tomatoes next summer. We’ve had snow & ice all week, and it makes me long even more for spring.
I read about your snow and called one of my friends on the coast. She’s an Oklahoma transplant, and she couldn’t believe it.~~Dee
January 29th, 2009 at 12:48 pmOoh! So glad you mentioned this. Almost forgot about my secret stash of frozen whole tomatoes. I’m with gardenmentor on the lazy factor, plus it seems that the heirlooms I favor have just a thin-barely there-skin. Probably why I can’t find them at the grocery…
February 2nd, 2009 at 12:51 pm