Canning Tomatoes

 I thought i was done with canning. No more canning tomatoes. But during these COVID months, what else do i have to do except grow tomatoes and can them?

My sweetie was told that tomatoes flare his eczema, so i limited my tomato plants to 2 sungolds. Then a friend gave me 2 Roma plants, so, of course, i planted them. As i mentioned a couple of days ago, 50 green tomatoes are slowly turning orange and losing their garden-fresh taste, so i made tomato sauce. I pour the tomato juice off the sauce because (1) i don't like watery tomato sauce and (2) i use the tomato juice (tomato broth is more apt) in making winter soups or Spanish rice.

The boiling water bath does take time to heat up. All that work for 4½ pints of tomato sauce.  And the tomato sauce is just for me.

That's what some people say about meditation: All that work, and it's just for you. Isn't that navel-gazing selfish?

Finding peace of mind ripples out to our family and friends. Practicing kindness establishes a habit of kindness, and the world--our neighbors, our community--need a lot of kindness right now.

Be a light for your world. Feed yourself some peace in meditation, and see what happens.

Sweet Sun-Dried Tomatoes

I came home to a pile of cherry tomatoes, and, yesterday, i finally got around to drying them. I particularly like grape tomatoes for their meatiness. They are okay in salads, though i prefer the sweetness of sungolds. But the grape tomatoes make very flavorful sun-dried tomatoes.

Some of us are sweet when young; some of us learn to be even sweeter when we are old and wrinkled and dried out.

Sweetness happens when we stop resisting the flow of Life.

Late Harvest

photo from www.quickcrop.ie

We are leaving for vacation tomorrow, which means giving all the vegetables in the refrigerator away. Finding a home for the red peppers was easy. I sun-dried one rack of Sungold cherry tomatoes. I decided to keep my 6 red cabbage, ranging in size from small to smallest.

In order not to have any leftovers, i cooked up the smallest cabbage tonight with some homegrown onions and the only remaining apple. Delicious.

When it comes to the end of our own season, we will be harvesting the mind we've been training all these years. The untrained mind may be unpredictable. The trained mind, the mind accustomed to mindfulness, has a much better chance of viewing the ending of the season of the life more calmly.

The seasons change.

A Jungle of a Tomato Vine

I planted one sungold cherry tomato plant behind a stone wall, hoping it would grow over the wall and trail down on the sunny side. Indeed, it's beyond my wildest dreams. The tomato vine covers almost the entire six-foot high, eight-feet wide wall. It's a jungle. That's a lot of tomato vines from one plant!

When we plant ourselves on a single spiritual path--rather than experimenting with many--our practice can overtake our life and bear a lot of fruit.

I'm going to be harvesting sungold tomatoes until first frost in mid-October.

Lucky Mouse

While meditating in the dark at 5 a.m. the other morning, i heard a little nibbling noise in the kitchen. I had been seeing chewed cherry tomatoes on the kitchen counter, but that morning i saw a half-nibbled sungold cherry tomato at the back corner of the stove. It was too big for somebody to haul into their hiding place.

My sweetie put out 4 mousetraps with his usual gourmet treat of a raisin and a dab of peanut butter. Next morning, no snap-traps were sprung, and more cherry tomatoes were nibbled. He tried adding half a tomato to each trap. Next morning, the innards of the tomatoes were missing on all 4 traps. Oh! What a delicately dining mouse.

The old hav-a-heart mousetrap was soon sitting on the kitchen counter, and within an hour, someone was rattling around inside.

Every morning i take a vow not to harm living beings, so my sweetie takes on the role of hunter in our house. This doesn't seem quite fair, but he is adamant about no mouse in the house.

Sometimes, we joke that we give the mice a choice: snap-trap or hav-a-heart. This mouse really did take the hav-a-heart way out of our house and enabled us to have--and feel--our hearts. Even when it comes to annoying, noisome little critters.

The First Cherry Tomato

The first cherry tomato has arrived. I popped that Sungold directly into my mouth and tasted joy.

How does joy "taste" to you?

Photo from burpee.com

More Tomatoes

Tomatoes! I've got 'em :)
I have the most abundant crop i've had in years. And i have fewer plants.

Oh! That was hard--to stop buying tomato plants.

The cleaning lady gave me 5 sungolds--THE best cherry tomato i've tasted. 2 died, which left me with the perfect number of 3. Sungolds sprawl, so 3 is quite sufficient.

I also planted 3 grape (cherry) tomatoes. Because of their meatiness, i sun-dry the grape tomatoes so i can have the flavor-burst this winter. (I gave the rest of the 6-pack to a friend.)

As usual, here in the North Country, i planted Jet Star, a small but early tomato, just to hedge my bets.

The cleaning lady gave me 5 Opalkas. (She grows only heirloom seeds.) A.K.A. The Polish Torpedo, these are BIG meaty paste tomatoes.

I bought a handful of other plants, and then i stopped.

Now 6 cherry tomatoes and 18 other tomato plants may sound like a lot to you, but some years i squeeze in 36.

Knowing how much is too much, i restrained my impulse for more.

And yet, now that's it's August, i do have "more" tomatoes than usual :)

Photo from best-tasting-tomato.blogspot.com

Harvesting Tomatoes--and Mindfulness

I picked my first Sungold cherry tomato yesterday. Delicious!

Popping one of these yellow-orange babies into your mouth smells like summer. This is the reason i planted those tiny seeds 5 months ago.

Every time we practice mindfulness in our daily lives, we are planting a tiny seed. Sometimes that 1/16-inch wide seed looks pathetically small compared to the avalanche of thoughts and feelings and incoming information.

We keep that seed warm by adding kind-heartedness toward ourselves, and voila! Mindfulness sprouts 2 "leaves" and for 2 seconds we leave judgments and opinions aside and simply acknowledge the present moment.

We water mindfulness daily simply by paying attention to what we are doing/saying/thinking. Five months later, that tiny tomato seed is 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide and producing a handful of tomatoes, each one filled with tiny, juicy seeds.