Tomatoes: get ’em while you can…

This morning I drove my daughter to school in the gentle rain, a smile on my face.  Drivers next to me scowled in their cars—miserable, and muttering under their breath.  Or so it seemed, in my reverie.  Traffic creeped along, hesitant, as if this was our collective first experience with a bit of wet pavement—something threatening to no one but a blue-sky-loving Californian.  Rain!  After how many months of perfectly pristine, neat-as-a-pin cloudless skies?  Nothing but sun lined up, single-file, day after day after endless day.  Too many for this Midwestern gal.  Call me a curmudgeon for saying so, but I’m ready for something different.  For foggy, cool mornings that beg us to pull on a woolly sweater and cozy slippers (and linger with a cup of coffee).  For soft raindrops on the roof that sing us to sleep at night, and coax us inside on weekends to play board games together and sip hot cocoa.  The few bursts of orange and yellow dressed branches along the road are appreciated too.

The only downside to fall in my mind is the end of the tomatoes.  The very last fruits of summer are lingering on our withered vines.  I can’t bear to pull them out.  From now on it’s perfect-looking, bland-tasting hothouse fruit, until next July at least.  So I’m out plucking every last red or orange orb I can muster (even a few green ones), plus I’m rushing to the farmers’ market on weekends to scrounge up whatever else I can.  I’ll stir them into soup, salsa, marinara sauce and any other goodies I can cram in the freezer.  Along with Ziploc bags loaded with rinsed and dried pint-sized cherries and larger early girls.  We’ll be stocked up for a bit.  And through fall and into winter we’ll occasionally pull out a frozen reminder of summer’s sunny bounty.  Who needs ice cream?

Oh and by the way…a trick to store away in the winter cook’s toolbox for those flavorless off-season Romas:  try roasting them.  A 30 minute turn in the oven bathed in a bit of olive oil (plus some fresh thyme or garlic) turns out flavor not so bad at all.  Try it when you’re missing the fruit of summer.  Might be the next best thing (unless your freezer’s stocked).

Here’s the first destination for our stash:  Spiced Tomato Soup.  Enjoy the rain…

 

 

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