Thursday, October 18, 2007

Seeing Red!

I mentioned before that I planned to try to ripen a bunch of green tomatoes indoors.  I took the best of the ones I pulled from the garden, wrapped them individually in newspaper and sat them on shelves in my basement, covered by a dark blanket.  Well, I checked them this morning – well, I checked one of them that is – it was red!  It worked!  Now the trick will be to keep them in decent shape until I have time to process them.  I wasn’t expecting this to happen so quickly! 

Scurries off to locate sauce recipes...

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Tomatoes out the $%@



They’re everywhere! The green tomatoes that is…it’s like summer is taking another turn – everything is green and flowering again… Alas, I know it won’t last, so I’m trying to enjoy it while it does. My tomato routine until now has been to check the garden every day or two and pluck the red ‘maters from the vines. As the season went on there were fewer and fewer ripe red ones, but still TONS of green tomatoes. My dear sweet husband, being a practical boy, inquired “can’t we just pick the green ones and use them?” So I did a little research on the subject. My new plan is to gather the healthiest of the fruits, bring them inside and let them ripen on their own indoors. Then I’ll process them – can them, freeze them, eat them, or something. J My sources tell me that indoor-ripened tomatoes do not taste quite as good as vine-ripened, but will be infinitely better than store-bought. Since I do plan on canning most of them as sauce of some sort, I think it’ll be OK. I picked a large basket-full last night, but didn’t even get a quarter of the way through the garden. Eek!


I’d also like to try some green tomato cooking experiments – any recipe recommendations?


Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Resurrected onions

Bit of a gardening surprise yesterday (but, as I’m pretty new to this sport, what isn’t a surprise?).  I went out to pluck the few cantaloupes that hadn’t been attacked by bugs from my little plot, and eventually turned my attention to the onions.  I had read that onions can be harvested after their stalks dry up and flop over, which happen earlier this summer…I pulled a few of them for salads already.  I figured I’d pull up the rest…but then I noticed that they were no longer dried and shriveled (the stalks that is)…they were green and sturdy.  Did I miss my chance to harvest the onions?  Why did they suddenly spring back to life?  Comments welcome; in the meantime I’ll be doing some research…