I can't believe I didn't tell you I pulled up the last tomato plants on Monday! How could I have thought writing about grape juice was more important than the dying gasps of the tomatoes? WHAT WAS I THINKING?
(Dramatics? Me? Whatever do you mean?)
There are a couple dozen tomatoes still sitting on the kitchen counter, but for all practical purposes, the tomato season is done for. Of course, last year at this time, I was still drowning in tomatoes, canning like a crazy woman and literally seeing red all the time. But this was not a normal year. This was the year of The Blight. The year when I made dire predictions about no canning, about having to buy tomatoes at the store. OH THE HORROR.
There are those dramatics again.
And in the end, what actually happened? Uh, I ended up canning 23 quarts of plain tomatoes, 9 pints of salsa, and 10 pints of spaghetti sauce with meat.
I KNOW, I KNOW. You're all staring at that tally and thinking to yourselves, "Just what the hell is this twit complaining about, exactly? Twenty-three quarts? That's, like, gallons of spaghetti sauce. Pots and pots of chili! OH MY GOD, SHUT UP, WHINY."
See? I knew you'd tell me to shut up. That's okay. I'm properly ashamed of my greed and dissatisfaction. Me and my 23 quarts of tomatoes will go sit in the corner now. But first . . .
HAHAHA! TWENTY-THREE QUARTS! Take THAT, stupid Blight!
Gardens have a way of pulling off enough to eat. May not always be what you want or in the proportions of what you want but there is enough. My mother always used to can extra in a particularly good year. Especially if the quality was excellent. She always figured a good year might be followed by a bad year for that crop and it often was. I remember the year of the tomato (200 plus quarts canned) or the year of tons of peaches. Of course she was feeding 5 kids on a limited income. We ate well.
ReplyDeleteYou will enjoy your hard won tomatoes this winter.
I don't want to be mean, here, but maybe you should be grateful your tomato plants didn't come to full glory - otherwise you'd have to move out so they'd have somewhere to live.
ReplyDeleteAnd that'd be scary.
So cool I love the way you all can stuff in America, her in Australia we don't can anything. Don't even know if you can get canning equipment whatever that is?! But I have 2 little tomatoe plants in now and a little tom thumb tomatoe one I planted today, don't think we'll be living off the fruit of them there vines anytime soon. Wish we canned sounds like fun and I'd love to beat your tally. I really enjoy your blog too. Very funny.
ReplyDeleteDo you eat a lot of spaghetti over the winter months or what? LOL!
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