I just brought in the last of the tomatoes that are big enough to ripen indoors, the peppermint plant and the geranium (which should have been brought in sooner). I'm a diehard gardener; I put an old sheet across the
tomato plants. If they make it through these next two nights, maybe some
of the smaller tomatoes will grow big enough to use.
It wasn't much of a year for a garden for me, due to health issues, but I will make the most of it.
There are pureed tomatoes in the freezer, waiting to be turned into sauce, a dab of wild greens picked earlier in the season and a bag of green beans that was given to me. Now I need to do some canning, since the weather is cooler and the extra heat will be welcome.
The newer breeds of tomatoes don't have enough acid in them to safely can in a boiling water bath, so, since part of the tomatoes in the freezer came from a friend who grows that kind, I will have to remember to add vinegar to each batch. My own few tomatoes are the heirloom kind, so I wouldn't have to worry about that, except that I mixed them together when I froze them.
Home canned tomato sauce is the greatest to make spaghetti sauce or to use in soup, meatloaf or in macaroni. It never gets as thick as the commercial kind, but it doesn't have to. The flavor is much more intense so it doesn't take as much to let you know it's there.
It's sounding better all the time. Maybe I will can tomato sauce tomorrow!
