Results Yet to Be Determined

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #23:

Try It

In the past few weeks, the tomatoes in our garden have been ripening. As a result, I've been spending a lot of time with tomatoes. Usually I put boxes of free tomatoes out on the curb every few days because I can't use all of them, but this year I've used so many that I haven't had the chance to give any away yet!

We make fresh salsa about once a week. We've had BLTs and burgers. I add cherry tomatoes to salads and veggie trays. I've also canned tomatoes and anticipate many more to come. 

Someone asked me the other day how many tomato plants we have. Honestly, I don’t recall what we planted, but I think it was 6 celebrity, 1 Roma, and 1 cherry. 

This year I'm trying a couple of new things. For the first time, I roasted tomatoes, peppers, and onions and made pasta sauce to freeze. 

Before roasting

After roasting

Pureed with some garlic, a hint of sugar, and a handful of basil

Everything pictured above resulted in enough sauce for a batch and a half of spaghetti. It's amazing how many tomatoes must give their lives for a little bit of pasta sauce! 

I have no idea if it's any good - I didn't taste it before I bagged it and put it in the freezer because I don't think I have the palate to assess sauce on its own. I don’t know what it should taste like! Plop it in a lasagna, and I’ll have a better guess. It smelled really good, though. So that's the first new thing I've tried with tomatoes... results yet to be determined. 

The next thing I'm trying is freezing cherry tomatoes. According to the always honest internet, frozen cherry tomatoes are a delight throughout the winter, so I am going to try using them in some recipes where I would normally use fresh cherry tomatoes... results yet to be determined. 

The third thing (which I haven't tried yet but intend to) is to freeze some of our celebrity tomatoes like so...

Results yet to be determined.