did I really just buy tomatoes?
We've been eating a lot of tomatoes around here lately. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner some days (alright, not many breakfasts... but I've managed at least two!). I have a couple sores in my mouth; I wonder if it's related. And yet, this afternoon at the farmers market I bought a couple pounds of paste tomatoes. Why?!
Well, the fact is that I didn't steward my tomato crop—any of my crops—as well as I should have. The Martinos Roma tomatoes, especially, never really got staked properly, nor pruned. As a result they weren't as big as they should have been and a whole lot of them rotted on the vine where they were in contact with the vine. And don't even get me started on the ones that rotted inside the house when I couldn't do anything with them in time.
Talking about the garden with Leah this evening she and I agreed that we've been well-supplied with produce, but I know that I could have done very much better. And I will, next year! Maybe I'll start by getting some garlic in the ground this fall.
Anyways, the farmers market tomatoes were to make a marinara sauce for dinner tomorrow. I count it as practice: one reason I didn't treat my tomatoes as well as I should have was that I've never canned tomatoes in any form, so I didn't even know where I should be starting. Now I know. And I was able to use my own basil and oregano in the sauce (along with onion from the farmers market), so that should count for something, right?