When Life Gives You Tomatoes...

Earlier this week, I was blessed by a friend's delivery of locally grown tomatoes, fresh cream from local grass-fed cows, and two dozen farm-fresh eggs. I have been in domestic heaven all week. While letting the tomatoes ripen on our dining room table, Big B and little b helped me make butter for the very first time. I do declare I may never buy butter from the store again.We also made ice cream using the fresh cream, fresh eggs, hand-extracted vanilla and handpicked berries. Delicious.When the tomatoes were sufficiently ripe, I scored them, blanched them, peeled them, de-seeded them and pureed them.I wanted to can tomato sauce, something our family uses quite a bit of. The consensus recipe for such an undertaking was from Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The recipe calls for dried spices so as not to interfere with the acidity and pH of the sauce. As the other ingredients in the sauce were so lovely, local, and organic, the boys and I took a trip to our local spice shop to bring our herbs up to par.The sauce cooked for about three hours before we canned it. The house smelled divine, and Big B and little b just couldn't get enough tastes.I was hooked. Tomorrow is the last day of the summer tomato season at our local farm, and what isn't picked and sold will be plowed and burned. As a result, they are selling u-pick tomatoes for a dollar a bucket. That's one dollar for over 25 pounds of tomatoes. How could we resist? The boys and I and several other tomato lovers met out at the farm for a few hot hours of harvesting.When all was said and done, we piled over 200 pounds of tomatoes in our car and paid just $23. We'll be divvying these up among family and friends, and using our share for more canning, sauce, salsa, ketchup, and fresh salads. And counting our juicy red blessings all the while.

"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts

while eating a homegrown tomato."
--Lewis Grizzard