It’s nice to have too many tomatoes. This doesn’t always happen, so when it does I start looking for potentially delicious ways to consume them. I’ve had several absolutely perfect tomato sandwiches this year. I actually prefer the simple cheese + mayo+ tomato combination to the more classic BLT. But a sandwich really only uses one tomato, and I have many. Sauce is already made and frozen. We’ve given to friends and food banks (and to be honest, some of these season finale tomatoes are a little over-ripe).

Soup is an idea. Ketchup? Perhaps, but I don’t use that much ketchup unless I am eating fries. Fruit and veggie juices, on the other hand, if tasty, disappear rather quickly from the fridge.

The recipe is simple and not my own creation. As with all things, I learned this one on the Internet. These proportions are rough and can be adjusted to taste.

8 cups chopped tomatoes
1 cup chopped celery
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped pepper
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
(optional) 1 spicy pepper

Add all ingredients to a stainless steel pot and simmer from about 1/2 hour. Press through sieve or food mill. Chill in fridge. The site I found this recipe on mentions it lasting in the fridge for about a week to 10 days. It’s really quite refreshing.

The orange glow fills the cracks and voids of our lives with soothing stickiness. A missed opportunity? Fill it with golden goodness. A lost soul? Pour on a bit of that butter from the gods. Broken heart? This glowing elixir will affix itself to your severed chambers and have them rhythmically pounding for joy.

The sun is born anew inside a plastic container formed to a pleasant eight-ounce inverted cone with its sides mashed flat. The Sun’s power, captured by our bees and then crudely swiped from their fortress. What goes around comes around, right Mr. Sun?

“Hell, NO!” Shouts Mr. Sun. And with his power he zaps back nearly all of the stolen honey. Leaving us with a scant 4 ounces.

Jerk. All stolen miracles such as this one are in short supply. The swiped thimble of sickly sweetness leaves my bees slightly bitter for their loss and angry at my thievery. Was it worth it? Probably not, but maybe. It’s a process to be learned and enjoyed. Next year will be more impressive.

It was our first time. We were virgin bean shellers. And I’m afraid it showed. Our technique needs some work. Shelling these two pints of Dragon Tongue bush beans took us over an hour.

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Beans are amazing. They produce frantically and for an extended period of time. They can be harvest fresh, they are good frozen or canned, and they can be dried. That’s crazy versatility. I can completely comprehend the Dave Ramsey’s beans and rice economy diet in terms of production quantities. At least I can speak to the beans half of the equation.  It would be interesting to plant a rice patty some day.

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I’ve read of gardeners slamming the entire bean plant with dried pods against the sides of a metal garbage can. The seeds presumably fall to the bottom, and I’m sure much of the chaff would too.  I didn’t look very hard, but I couldn’t find any metal garbage cans lying around.  And most of our beans are pole varieties, so pulling out the entire vine is not a great option.  Shelling by hand, one bean at a time, was fine – just time intensive. It would have been nice to have an air compressor to spray the chaff off the seeds. That could work. Or maybe just a strong fan. The amount of beans we grow can certainly be done by hand in a few hours so I don’t plan on running out to buy an air compressor tomorrow. Then again, we did lose our tire pump the other day. What would Dave Ramsey say to that?

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This heirloom tomato variety, Kellogg’s Breakfast (aka KB), is wonderful. Great flavor, nice size, awesome color, and seems to be producing rather well considering it’s large size. The leaves are showing signs of fungus, but so are all the other varieties we are growing this year. I need to experiment with plastic for mulch to see if that keeps the fungus away. Each year we usually choose different tomato varieties, but this one is a keeper.

Here is a little eggplant + tomato dish we have been enjoying lately.

1. Slice eggplant – enough to cover the bottom of your pan/dish
2. (optional) Microwave eggplant to soften @ 6 minutes (this speeds up cook time), dump out any water
3. Arrange eggplant on bottom of pan
4. Add a layer of basil leaves
5. Add a layer of tomatoes
6. Add a little olive oil on top
7. Bake for about 20 minutes
8. Top with mozzarella/parmesan cheese and continue baking until cheese is toasty and/or eggplant is thoroughly cooked

Anne says she could eat this every day and never be tired of it. It is good, but we have beans and cucumbers to eat too.

I knew I would be spending a little time today picking beans. I actually spent quite a bit of time searching for the stealthy little legumes. What is a legume? I mean, what constitutes legumeness?  I’ll have to look that up later.

We planted quite a few beans this year. I had somehow found myself with four different varieties and thought I ought to try them all and before I knew what happened, I had planted just about all of them. Anne announced she likes beans at some point, so I felt justified. The variety above is Dragon Tongue – a bush variety with purple and yellow/white splotches. It’s a good one.

The seed catalog also enticed me to spend my dollars on some attractive eggplant varieties. The most unique is the Turkish Orange. We grew Bambini eggplant a few years ago, another small variety. I didn’t much care for it. This Turkish Orange is a little bigger, more orange and just great. We’ve enjoyed a few eggplant parmesan already.

And then there are cucumbers. You can’t really tell from the photo below, but the basket on the right is full of cucumbers. Why in the world did I need to plant so many cucumbers? Once again, I am a sucker for varieties. The burpless is a favorite, so I had to have some of those. Anne wanted some of the lemon variety we planted last year, and then I thought it would great to plant some for pickles. The pickling variety is pictured below next to the lavender touch eggplant (also very good). I ought to be picking these cucs a bit younger. Their size and abundance was a surprise this morning.

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We needed an additional little chest freezer to store more veggies from the garden. If only we could freeze cucumber. The new freezer is not pictured below. In order to move the new freezer in, we needed to first move the old bathtub out. And what better place for the bathtub than on the front porch?!

We also needed to finish cutting and cementing in the old waste lines that were in the bathroom. For that we needed cement. But since we were going to mix cement, we should fill in that sketchy basement window at the same time (it’s on our list – see previous post). So Anne went out and bought more cement. Meanwhile, I dug potatoes and pulled onions and turnips and more cucumbers, beans and tomatoes. The garden is getting cleaned up. I’m not at all sure what any of this has to do with the tub on the porch, but that seemed to start everything rolling this weekend.

Anne is tempted to make a little garden pond out of the old tub. It might happen.

I enjoy harvesting. It typically means eating is just around the corner. But I always feel a twinge of sadness and worry. The sadness, I think, stems from the impending finality of the season that harvesting marks. And I worry the produce will fail to live up to tasty expectations. The acorn/winter squash was especially nerve-racking since it is hard to know if/when it’s ripe. It isn’t winter yet, so it seems a bit premature, but we were not disappointed at all. And with enough butter and brown sugar on top, who cares if it’s ripe! The eggplant is a white variety, so that one is ripe.

Another sure-not-to-disappoint are the cucumbers. I’ve been taking these along with raw beans in my lunch this week. And I think I mentioned this before, but the cucs are a burpless variety. I’ve never noticed that regular cucumbers cause me to burp, but these certainly do not. Perhaps it’s just a marketing gimmick. Seed stores would probably sell more if they labeled everything burpless. Burpless corn, burpless watermelon, burpless greens… When faced with the decision to buy burpy or burpless variety, who wouldn’t buy burpless?!

More on the way. I froze most of the remaining kohlrabi – we shall see how that turns out. Also picked a large turnip last night, along with some potatoes, fennel and carrots. I don’t think I will be planting turnips of this variety again. Not my favorite.