Harvesting

Tom harvested some of his crops Thursday, which meant I had to process his harvest.

There was a small basket full of poblano peppers, a second picking,  a basket full of Roma tomatoes, and a nice crop of slicing tomatoes. He grows two plants of peppers in the vented greenhouse. The tomatoes are planted on the west wall of the house, where they get lots of heat. 

The Roma tomatoes are for sauce. I halve them and roast them with oregano from the garden. The peppers are roasted and diced to freeze, to be added to things like shrimp and grits later in the year. 

First pan of Romas ready for the oven.

Dicing the roasted poblano peppers. 

As the tomatoes cool the skins pucker and can be easily lifted off of the flesh of the tomatoes. 

The tomato pulp goes into a cooking pot, where I reduce it down and use an immersion blender to puree it. All of those tomatoes don't make a lot of sauce, but the sauce has a garden fresh flavor on pasta in the winter time. There will be more pickings and more sauce. 

Then there are these lovely vine ripened beauties to eat fresh. Today I had a tomato sandwich for lunch, Many days there will be cottage cheese with tomatoes. Every so often we'll have caprese salad - sliced tomatoes with fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, olive oil, and sea salt from the Oregon coast. Yum.

By the time I got the sauce ready for the freezer, I was tired. I read and dozed in my chair. Dinner was hamburgers, with cheese, lettuce, avocado, and tomatoes, of course.