Harvest Season: Our Own Tomato Festival

Each year we harvest our tomatoes. We always anticipate canning some for tasty spaghetti sauce in the winter months. Mostly Roma variety for less juice but other larger beefsteak varieties as well. Need lots of newspaper on the table to soak up the juice spatter during food preparation.

Copyright James E. Martin 2014 Tomato Harvest

While canning through the long heating cycles, we celebrate our own Tomato Festival with a sip of fresh tomato juice mixed with a splash of V8, followed by a salt dash licked off the back of the hand, a squeeze of fresh lime juice fresh off the rind, and a shot of Herradura Anejo tequila. This has been an annual celebration for the past several years.

Copyright James E. Martin 2014 Our Own Tomato Festival Celebration

There is a sense of satisfaction with all these jars of tomatoes with their fetching color. The herb trough below was made from cedar picket fence remnants when we were first married and living in Dallas, Texas. Still enjoying after all these years.

Copyright James E. Martin 2014 Winter Tomatoes

We can never have enough tomatoes it seems. So today we will be off to the local farmer's market to see if they have bushel baskets of seconds and slightly bruised...good for canning tomatoes. And then we visit the local orchard since August should be full into ripe peach season and I need at least one bushel of juicy ripe peaches. I can't wait. My girls are sleeping in late this morning and getting their beauty sleep.