T is for…

Tomatoes.
Green tomatoes.

Green tomatoes laying in my basement, hopefully ripening.

I know there are supposedly wonderful and delicious ways of preparing green tomatoes, but I am all about ripe tomatoes. So I will wait. And frankly, I have never tried any of those recipes.

Not all will make it, I know. But some will. And they will be tasty delights, almost as good as right off the vine, maybe into November. Maybe all the way to Thanksgiving, but that might be a stretch this year, what with that holiday being late.

In no other place where I have lived and grown tomatoes have I been so diligent about picking the green ones before the first good freezes. I use the plural, because I will cover the plants, and/or gamble the meteorologist doesn’t know what they are talking about, on one or two spaced out first frosts. But like this week, when two good freezes are predicted, down in the 20’s…I pick and call it good.

So why here and not in other places? Because in other places, tomatoes start in July and go like crazy until everyone has tomatoes coming out their ears, their kid’s ears, their neighbor’s ears, and are foisting them onto people who don’t even like tomatoes. So when the first freeze rolls around, it's easy to be ready to give them up.

Here, not so much. I have been lucky the last few summers to have ripe tomatoes the first of August…or so. This year not until after Labor Day. Oh my anguish with the shorter growing season of this elevation and northern latitude.

So I pick the green ones to extend my access to homegrown tomatoes.

Maybe not vine ripened, but garden grown.

Dearest Sister tried to get me to see the wisdom in giving up the growing of my own for the purchasing of them from the local farmer’s market, but it was folly on her part.

See. There is always next year…this summer was late…and coolish…and really noone’s tomatoes did well…

(I don’t always listen to her, but don't tell her that....)