A Tomato Invasion
By Michael Buck and Michelle Pittman
no images were found
Lately, the rectangular breakfast table in our kitchen has been a little crowded. Taking up the space normally occupied by a cereal bowl, coffee cup and laptop are dozens of Roma, beefsteak and Mr. Stripey tomatoes.
Accounts from friends and family about their gardens put our tomato yield in the “wildly insane” category. Maybe it was the lasagna gardening. Or maybe it was the boost of fertilizer our garden soaked up a few weeks ago. Whatever it was, our tomato haul was robust.
There are only so many tomato sandwiches and Caprese salads you can eat before the sight of tomatoes makes you want to sigh. But don’t let them go to waste! Save them! This week we offer a couple of suggestions on how to preserve your fresh bounty.
The first and foremost thing we make at our house is pasta sauce. Five pounds of tomatoes, along with some other ingredients, will yield about a gallon of sauce. We have nearly three gallons of sauce on hand.
If you’re looking for a simple sauce recipe that only requires freezer space to preserve, check out Feaston.
Another favorite is salsa. Both fresh and canned. We made one LARGE batch of salsa and it took FOR-EV-ER. It wasn’t so much the process as it was the amount of tomatoes we were trying to use.
Our salsa recipe was fairly traditional. This recipe is similar to ours and we would recommend it.
If you’re looking to learn how to can fruits, jams and the like, we’re not going to try and explain. The Ball Corp. is the real expert. They have a fantastic guide.