Oh these glorious local tomatoes

There’s a lot of red in my life in the best way possible. I actually love red and, in my world where I don’t go for too much colour, I do live with a lot of red.

So looking at these boxes of tomatoes on my kitchen table for these past few days has been so wonderful. It makes me feel so lucky and so rich to have this glut of sweet produce right here in my home.

But I think my resident flock of fruit flies, (who seem to live year round in my compost bins), also love my tomatoes, so I’ve been processing them for the past few days.

My absolutely most favourite way to preserve tomatoes is to cut them in half, place them on a baking tray with a little olive oil on the bottom, (because, lycopene), in a single layer, cut a few more into pieces and stuff them into the gaps, slice a ton of garlic from my garden and sprinkle on top, get some garden herbs, in this case rosemary, the last of the basil and some thyme, sprinkle with a bit of sea salt, and roast them in a fairly hot oven for about an hour.

And then wait.

After the hour I take them out and scoop them into a big bowl…the ones that aren’t devoured with some fresh baguette for lunch that is…and repeat the process.

After about six trays full, I have enough roasted tomatoes to process them in glass jars.

I chose glass because I’m not so sure the plastic freezer bags don’t leach out toxic BPA, and anyway, having beautiful, glass jars of jewel-like fruit and veg in my pantry makes me happy.

One more day of roasting and preserving and I’ll be finished with my tomatoes. The squashes and pumpkins are the next on my list. 😀