Freezing Tomatoes

As I mentioned the other day we have so many tomatoes coming in at the same time I'm getting a little overwhelmed! I mentioned to Dave that I needed to deal with the tomato situation and he goes "I told you, BLT's" - I said there are only so many BLT's that I can eat and he said "well maybe there's only so many you can eat but...'we' can eat a lot of them". Haha, while I do love a BLT especially with fresh-from-the-vine-warmed-by-the-sun tomatoes, there really is only so much bacon one person should eat.

I'm super busy today tho and don't really have the time to "deal" with them - as in, making spaghetti sauce or tomato sauce or chili sauce or whatever. I googled if possible to freeze raw tomatoes and yep, it is - it's ok to freeze them whole with or without the peels, chopped, sliced, or pureed with the caveat that you then can only use them in cooked recipes as they'll be mushy once thawed. Since I was planning to make sauce of some sort with them anyway, freezing them for now will buy me a little time.

I washed and cored them, removed the peels from some and left on for others - I'm experimenting to see which I prefer. Do you know how to easily remove the peels? I slice of the top where the core is (or remove the core), cut an "x" in the bottom of each one, and gently lower them into a pot of hot water. Leave for a couple minutes until the edges of the "x" start to lift, then remove from the water. Let cool until you can handle them before peeling the skin off starting at the "x". In this photo you can see the "x" on the left one, and them starting to peel the right one.

Now I'm popping them whole into the freezer on cookie sheets until they are frozen firm, then I'll transfer them to big freezer plastic baggies. I'll letcha know what I make with them when I have the time!

Bye for now, off to make Dave's coconut rum bundt cake for his bday tomorrow :)

one year ago: buckeyes
two years ago: how to baste eggs

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

My favorite thing to do with end of season cherry tomatoes - I cut them in half (green ones too!) and roast with olive oil, salt and pepper (sometimes I'll put italian seasoning on) at 350' for a couple hours. It's SO good - I put it on anything I can think of, tonight it'll be over creamy polenta. 

I make this any time of the year with store bought cherry tomatoes and it's delish - but of course using home grown tastes the best! 

You can also freeze this, I put in small freezer bags and squeeze out as much air as possible (using my straw method - close the ziplock around a straw and suck out all the air, remove the straw and quickly seal the ziplock to close).