Tomato, tomahto, Let's call the whole thing off

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!