Plum tomatoes definitely have more paste and less water. The residue that remains behind on the sides of the pans hardens into "tomato candy," My son and I stood in front of the sink scraping the sides of the pans till they were so clean they did not need to be put into the dish washer. The crusty stuff reminded me of the apricot rolls I used to eat as a kid and I wondered why the hell our food industry has not yet seen value in making this stuff available for sale at candy counters as an option to the sugar/high fructose corn syrup stuff that rots your teeth and makes us fat. Sounds weird but I'm serious, this stuff is great! I guess they would have to come up with a better name than "tomato candy." With a garden like this who needs the grocery store??? No sense in having a big garden unless you process the food, especially when you least feel like it.....Jose!!!
I eat tomatoes like other people eat apples. Cucumbers too. I'm going surfing all day today and undoubtedly I'll be wanting to snack on something hydrating and food-like but not heavy.
Holy moly.
I stumbled upon a great idea (that old Italian gardeners could say is common knowledge). Don't plant everything at the same time in the spring. Plant a lot but don't stop. Plant little by little after your initial planting and you will get fresh food supplied to you by Mother Nature a little bit at a time. This cauliflower was excess at the nursery. Looked like shit actually but I planted them anyway with our custom food in the hole. The plants came back, the weather got cooler and now I have TONS of fresh healthy organic cauliflower! I just trimmed the rosemary into cone-shaped trees for Christmas and this is the result. Now I've got to go get lamb to cook so I can use the rosemary!
I figured I would save seeds and start them myself next year from my best plants. Made sense to me. To do this I knew I had to dry them really well before bagging them, bag needs a label, and I put a few grains of rice in to finish the drying just in case the seeds wanted to rot. You don't need many seeds at all. This pile of drying cayenne peppers came from just six plants-enough for years of spicing, so I really only needed to just keep one or two seeds. I started drying them on a stump that I could see sucking the moisture out of the seeds immediately.
Really, why buy them when you can grow them? It's not hard but not that easy at the same time. More on that later! |
Archives
July 2023
Categories |