Over the weekend, while continuously picking an armful of various types of tomatoes each day, I finally committed to bottling them into sauce. I had been weighing my options because I really wanted a sufficient quantity of ripe tomatoes. This process which gets easier every year - involves blanching, peeling, mashing and sauteing with a blend of herbs, onions and garlic, and then sterilizing bottles, filling them with sauce, and finally, the timed water bath. Before I get started, I really contemplate if the 5 hours of work are really worth it. I recognize my laziness and promptly say to myself, "YES it is hard, YES it is a lot of work and there are many stages -- YES, it is worth it!"
So I selected some music CD's that might help get me into more of a domestic mood. I was glad that Madeline Peyroux, some Ella Fitzgerald, and the entire Greatest Hits CD by Fleetwood Mac, would set the tone. Singing while I work makes a difference for me. The bottling process reminds me most of what I miss about my Grandmothers, who sang while they worked. A lifetime of stored memories and experience readily at hand, no reference book required. I find that doing this work alone is not as much fun as doing it with a few other people. Perhaps, I could find a Grandma adoption program so that we both could share in the experience of bottling sauce together.
The bottles are now cool, labelled, and ready to go to the basement shelves that hold all my treasures. I feel wealthy when I look at my modest provisions, dreaming of the many winter dinners where I will not open another bottle of store bought sauce. Besides being able to enjoy the taste of summer in December, I know that my sauce does not contain GMO corn-based thickeners or GMO canola oil. It contains the stored energy of the sun and water, and the promises handed down by heritage tomato growers through the centuries. The locally grown garlic and onions, and the chives, rosemary, parsley, and oregano from outside my backdoor, all married together into a delightful sauce, sweetened with carrots!
The bowlful of cherry tomatoes - zebras, yellow pears and Isis candies, were chopped and tossed into a tabbouleh mix, with a little olive oil. Delicious! And I do remember to share the goodness, so I've made sure to give some ripe tomatoes away. I really believe it is a great gift to give, because so many of us have forgotten what a truly ripe tomato smells and tastes like! Someone needs to create a perfume that smells like fresh tomato plants after a good rain - there really is nothing like it.
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