MoFo: 30 Pounds of Tomatoes ~ and a Doodle Giveaway!

Yesterday my aunt Laura and her partner had a special opportunity to pick tomatoes. Through a friend, they were invited to help glean the end of the organic, dry-farmed tomato harvest and they picked a TON of tomatoes. When Laura called me, she basically asked me "How many can you handle?" BRING IT.

They were so incredibly generous and brought me two huge cardboard boxes of tomatoes - about 30 pounds. (Thank you!!!) When a gift like this befalls you, you gotta clear your schedule, because it's gonna take some time.

clockwise, from bottom left:

Coffee for chopping power, Drained-off tomato juices, Giant pot of diced tomatoes, Bowls of icky bits and stems, Washed tomatoes ready to be diced, Tomatoes all chopped up and ready for the pot - plus my totally beloved and exclusive tomato knife (most excellent wedding present!)

I tasked Mr VE&T with walking the dogs today, so that I could get busy with tomatoes. The first item on my agenda was to can up a bunch of diced stewed tomatoes for winter. I especially wanted to quickly process the fruits that were a little damaged or wouldn't last even a couple of days. So I got to work: washing the tomatoes, de-stemming and chopping off the icky bits, dicing the rest, and draining off the excess juices.

tomato juice galore

Next I brought the diced tomatoes to boil in a giant pot and let them boil for 5-10 minutes or so - partly to kill off any lingering bad bacteria, and also just to let the tomatoes cook down a bit. I like them better that way. After they've cooked, I ladle off the extra tomato juice, so that the canned tomatoes will be less liquidy. I have a LOT of tomato juice on my hands right now. Time for tomato soup?

just the first batch!

Then I carefully put the tomatoes into my sterilized jars, and processed them for another 20 minutes. In all, I got 18 pints of diced tomatoes - little jars of bright red summer-in-a-bottle... all ready to be tucked away for winter time.

Plus, I still have all of these guys left on my counter top. These are the fruits without blemishes, which means they didn't quite require such rapid processing. I suspect I might well get a few more MoFo posts out of this glorious haul.

My family, as depicted in tomato form

What can I say, I got tomatoes on my mind!

FootFoot, Dottie Bonkers, Yummers Potatoes, Stevie Wonder, Snoopy Snoppy

I've been feeling like there haven't quite been enough doodles of my furry gang on my blog lately... so here's a bonus doodle of the Noodle Club, as I call them. Speaking of doodles... I floated this idea on Facebook and got a super enthusiastic response... so here goes nothing:

DOODLE GIVEAWAY!

Two lucky winners 

will receive an original, personalized doodle of themselves 

and their family/fur family. 

To enter: leave a comment on this blogpost and just say something nice about tomatoes or doodles or pets or summertime or whatever. 

Winner will be chosen on the Last Day of VeganMoFo: Sept 30th!