Preserving the Last of the Summer Tomatoes
Your winter self will thank you
I have been growing tomatoes since I was in my early 20s. The first were planted in a crack in a sidewalk next to a fence in my back “yard” in Somerville, Massachusetts. There are a lot of things I don’t remember, but — buying seeds, using a spoon to dig up the tiny bit of soil I could find in that one-inch space, planting, watering, (sort of) praying, then somehow succeeding in growing my own tomatoes (bearing in mind that I was very much a city boy, and aware of what a miracle this was in a naïve, dumb-as-dirt way) — that event was singular. Maybe even formative.
OK, fast forward to around 10 years later, when I’d become someone who actually knew how to garden a little, and would grow 40, 50, 60 pounds of tomatoes annually. I started by doing this idiotic routine that old cookbooks told you to do: Cut a little X in the bottom of the tomato skin, drop it in boiling water, count to 10, take it out, peel the skin. (Let me tell you: NEVER do that. Unnecessary.) I made elaborate sauces with my skinned tomatoes and canned them.
Then…
