Thursday, September 23, 2010

A tomato graveyard

I just, just wrote of the surprising abundance of BC sockeye,and now i must tell you about the awful lack of tomatos.

last year was tomatos' time to shine. Entirely because the sun did its own shining. There were more than we could possibly keep up with on the farm or in the restaurant: green zebras, orange bananas, black crims, garden peaches, striped romas, and tons, literally tons, of little cherry varieties. I developed cold sores in my mouths for so much lunchtime tomato acid. Just dipped in salt they were liek a fix to me. This year though, not even a tomato mayo sandwich on sourdough and i feel today it all ended.

Today i walked througha tomato graveyard.

A bit of life was taken from me too, seeing the blight ravaged vines, laden with ripe tomatos that i know will only turn blemishy, black, and inedible. It was devastating, for it seemed like with just two more day so fsunshine we would have been up to our knees in them. Instead though, we got rain. And frost. And ended a summer we never really had.

I did, however, get to freeze a whole bunch of splitters (tomatos that literally break through their skin with juicy ripeness, not acceptable to sell to restaurants, but incredibly tasty), oven-dry two trays worth of cherry romas, and make a few desperate jars of sauce. And as i eat them this winter, i will hope to have plenty more next year to replenish this sad stockpile; no, to eat fresh on sourdough with gobs of homemade mayo and course salt, to make up for this year.

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