Somebody stop the tomato storm!
It is a Monday.
This is what I have staring me in the face.
I have made all the salsa one person can make. Everyone scatters when they see me coming with a bowl in my hands.
There will be another wave of fresh tomatoes ripening in a day or so.
Its time to fight fire with....
the freezer.
I used to stand over a boiling pan of water blanching tomatoes and fishing them out and then peeling them. Its the long hot frustrating way to do things.
And then I came up with a better system. Better because it involves less work!
First core the tomatoes
Place in a microwave safe bowl
cover with a paper towel and microwave 2 to 3 minutes per tomato depending on your microwave.
Let them stand covered and cool for 15 minutes or longer.
The skin separates and peels off easily using fingers or a fork.
This yields (from 4 tomatoes) approx a quart of lovely fresh tomatoes which will be great to have this winter.
I put mine in gallon freezer bags because that's what I had on hand.
I hung the bag of tomatoes from the shelf above using a container of ice Cream as a weight to hold it. I guess clothespins would work too. I let it hang suspended between the frozen blueberries and the Haagen Dazs for two hours because I was going for a log shaped roll for easy stacking instead of letting the tomatoes spread around in the bag.
So it was a laid back style of accomplishing. Micro, let stand till cool, bag, freeze...
but it left me free to do other things and at the end of the day I had that pile of tomatoes tucked away for winter.
It was easy enough that I think I can do this every other day till the tomatoes are gone.
We'll see!
